











'-^^.^ ov^^^^u^'- ^^<>^ ^^im^^\ ^^j.^ 














A STUDY 

OF 

AMERICAN LITERATURE 



BY 

WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON 

PROFESSOR OF THE GREEK LANAUAGE AND LITERATURE 
AT ADELPHIA COLLEGE 



PUBLISHED FOR THE 

BAY VEIW READING CLUB 
General Office, Boston Boulevard, Detroit, Mich. 



BY THE 

GLOBE SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY 

NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 
1907 



1 UEKARY of CONGRESS J 
Two Copies Rocclvad ', 




CcoYnirht Entry 

90, f<io7 

Uit.^ CC ViXc, No. 

CGr*Y U. 



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Copyright, 1907, by 
Globe School Book Company. 

M. r. 1 



MANHATTAN PRESS 

474 WEST BROADWAY 

NEW YORK 



PREFACE 

In this volume the attempt has been made to dis- 
tinguish the salient epochs in our literature, brief 
though the story is. The relation of the artist and 
his work to the general life of his time and of his 
people has been frequently recalled. This relation 
is especially illustrated in the chronological tables, 
which may be supplemented from the regular text- 
books in American history. 

Nevertheless, the treatment in our text itself is 
in the main biographical. That is, the effort has 
almost always been to make the single life appear 
an articulated and rational whole. This method 
craves far more space than was here available ; but, 
as Miss Scudder remarks of her similar undertaking 
for English literature, any such volume as ours must 
serve merely as an introduction to far wider reading. 
The writer believes that biographical treatment is 
the most intelligible to the young reader. It also 
seems to him the most truthful. That the artist, 
more than other men, can escape largely from 
local or temporal limitations, and find his spiritual 
kin, seems undeniable ; yet from his truest self he 
cannot escape. Even when the artistic activity 
seems most detached from the man, as in Haw- 
thorne, or even in Poe, the work will be better 
understood by a sympathetic study of the life, the 
whole life. 



/ 



iv PREFACE 

The general policy has been to mention relatively- 
few persons, in order to leave a definite impression 
as to each. The especial interests of students in 
school or college have been steadily considered. In 
particular, Hawthorne and Longfellow have been 
treated with relative fullness and somewhat critical 
method, because their works have, and should have, 
a very large part in our popular education. The 
competent and judicious teacher may prefer to throw 
more emphasis on other authors, Franklin, Irving, 
Emerson, or Lowell. In that case the materials are 
of course abundant and close at hand. The chrono- 
logical tables are an integral portion of the work, 
and supply many items which may be missed in the 
text. 

A fuller treatment of one group will be found 
in the author's "New England Poets," Macmillan, 
1898. While the present book comes down to the 
year 1900, there is, naturally, no attempt to pass 
final judgment in detail on the career of men and 
women still living. 

Many mistakes and inept statements have been 
corrected by Prof. C. E. Norton, Colonel T. W. 
Higginson, Prof. Stockton Axson, and other gen- 
erous critics, but no one shares the responsibility 
for what remains. The writer and the publishers 
will be most grateful for the correction of errors 
in matters of fact. 



CONTENTS 

PAET I 

THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

PAGE 

Introduction 3 

CHAPTER I 

The Pioneers 7 

1. Beginnings of Virginia . . . . . . 7 

2. Plymouth Plantation 14 

3. The Character of the Puritans 17 

CHAPTER II 

The Seventeenth Century 25 

1. Winthrop's Diary 25 

2. The Cobbler of Agawam 27 

3. Roger Williams 28 

4. The Bay Psalm Book 30 

5. Anne Bradstreet 31 

6. Michael Wigglesworth 32 

7. Samuel Sewall 33 

CHAPTER III 

The Eighteenth Century 46 

1. Cotton Mather 46 

2. Jonathan Edwards 48 

3. Benjamin Franklin 50 

4. Revolutionary Literature 55 

5. Addenda 59 

CHAPTER rV 

Beginnings of Romance and Poetry 62 

V 



vi CONTENTS 



CHAPTER V 

PAGE 

The First Masters 78 

1. Washington Irving 78 

2. James Fenimore Cooper 85 

3. William Cullen Bryant 91 

4. The " Knickerbocker " Group ..... 96 
6. Edgar Allan Foe 98 



PART II 

THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

Introduction. Culture and Scholarship in the East . 113 

CHAPTER I 

The Concord Group 122 

1. Ralph Waldo Emerson 122 

2. Henry David Thoreau 138 

3. Margaret Fuller 144 

4. Other Friends of Emerson 148 

CHAPTER II 

Nathaniel Hawthorne 151 

CHAPTER III 

The Literature of Abolition 173 

1. John Greenleaf Whittier 175 

2. Lydia Maria Child 186 

3. Harriet Beecher Stowe 189 

CHAPTER IV 

The Cambridge Poets 197 

1. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 197 

2. Oliver Wendell Holmes 215 

3. James Russell Lowell 224 



CONTENTS VU 



CHAPTER V • 

PAGE 

Less Familiar Names 241 

CHAPTER VI 
The Historians 252 

CHAPTER VII 
The Orators 266 



PART III 

THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

CHAPTER I 
General Conditions 291 

CHAPTER II 

lilTERATURE OF THE SoUTH 301 

CHAPTER III 
Later New England 314 

CHAPTER IV 
The West 326 

CHAPTER V 
The Middle East 337 

CHAPTER VI 
Conclusion 351 

Index of Authors and Works 371 

Bibliographical Index ....... 379 

Topics for Essays or Lectures 382 



PART I 

THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

(1607-1830) 



INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN 
LITERATURE 

INTRODUCTION 

DIFFICULT as it is to declare precisely what National 
constitutes a national literature, men gener- ^^"^^^^1^° 
ally agree that it should include, on the one hand, 
some adequate expression of the individual and 
national life, and, on the other, some approach to 
artistic beauty of form : in other words, some claim 
on lasting human interest. 

We should always realize clearly that the whole Alien 
advancing life of man, especially the progress of the elements. 
Western Aryan on the European continent and on 
our own, is one unbroken story of many chapters. 
All earlier literature and art, from Homer to Kipling, 
enters into the history of every civilized race in 
Europe or America. Hence no literature since the 
Greek, if even that, has had a perfectly free spontane- 
ous development from within. Roman culture was 
more than half Hellenic ; colloquial Latin passed in- 
sensibly, in Gaul, into mediseval French ; the speech, 
the literature, all the ideas and ideals of the French- 
speaking Norman, became an indivisible portion, 
perhaps the larger part, of the later Englishman's 
heritage, and therefore of our own. 

Again, through conversion to Christianity, even 
before the Conquest, both Saxon and Norman, and 

3 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



Dependence 
on England. 



Our youth- 
fulness. 



Kelt as well, passed more or less under the sway of 
the Hebraic imagination, of Oriental thought. The 
favorite tales of our nurseries for generations have been 
largely Arabian. Even from the uttermost East, from 
Malays or Chinese, some myths seem to have come 
to find a home at our firesides. The very words we 
speak, like the foods and spices upon our table, 
should remind us of our debt to remotest ages, 
peoples, and regions. These things are not of our 
creation. 

American literature, in particular, never sprang 
from native soil and roots. It is a gradual offshoot 
from the English, deriving its vitality from Shake- 
speare's land and speech. We may feel it our 
patriotic duty to believe that it has long since, like 
the bough of the mangrove tree, taken sturdy root 
in new soil, and declared its independence of the 
parent trunk. Yet for many years, certainly, even 
after our political and economic freedom was assured, 
our intellectual culture remained almost absolutely, 
even timidly, English. All this, be it repeated, was 
an inheritance only, in no sense ours alone. 

Yet it will no longer be questioned that we our- 
selves have a complete and self-centered national life, 
which must eventually find full and adequate expres- 
sion in language as in every form of useful and 
beautiful art. Already we have seen the birth on 
American soil of works which the world will not 
willingly let die. The tale of our literature is, how- 
ever, a brief one, hardly a century in length, and we 
have good reason to hope that it is yet by no means 
half told. One purpose of such a volume as this 
must be to say to the youth of a new generation : — 



INTRODUCTION 5 

" There will be other towers for thee to build ; 
There will be other steeds for thee to ride ; 
There will be other legends, and all filled 
With greater marvels and more glorified." 

— Longfellow's Castle-builders. 

But just as our political history and institutions, 
even the configuration of our coasts, mountains, and 
rivers, are the earliest subjects of our study, so, 
looking back with fond and modest pride and forward 
with eager hope, we should trace with peculiar ten- 
derness the story of our national utterance thus far 
in speech. Happily we are, at least, already rich in 
poetry and romance especially fitted to bring delight 
to the heart of youth. 

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The completest account of American literature is by Pro- 
fessor Charles F. Richardson, in two volumes. It closes with 
the year 1885. Professor Wendell's "Literary History of 
America" is recent, philosophic, and stimulating. E. C. Sted- 
man has treated our poets only with a closer personal sym- 
pathy. A more recent work is " History of American Verse " 
to 1897, by E. L. Onderdonk (McClurg). Professor Moses 
Coit Tyler has written a most exhaustive account of literature 
in the colonial and revolutionary epochs, which will not soon 
be replaced. AU these books, like the political histories of 
Parkman and Fiske, should be found in every school library. 
To them the present author confesses once for all his constant 
debt. 

Many authors of the seventeenth century are quite inacces- 
sible, and not one has been, or is likely to be, widely popular. 
For that period, and, indeed, somewhat later also, citations 
sufficient for all the needs of the schoolroom will usually be 
found in Stedman and Hutchinson's "Library of American 
Literature," Vols. I-XI (1888-1890). Every school not able 
to purchase this standard work should at least be provided at 
once with Prof. W. P. Trent's three miniature volumes of 
" Colonial Prose and Poetry " (Crowell). 



6 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

Appleton's "Cyclopaedia of American Biography" should 
be in constant service, and will usually supply more copious 
bibliographical references than could find space in a school 
book. Indispensable also for the teacher's desk is Oscar 
Fay Adams's "Dictionary of American Authors," Houghton, 
1901. Donald G. Mitchell's two illustrated volumes on 
"American Lands and Letters " cover nearly the whole field 
in pleasant, chatty fashion, and would make attractive gifts 
or prizes. To Whitcomb's " Chronological Outlines of Ameri- 
can Literature " every maker of text-books in this field is 
heavily in debt. The student will doubtless have in hand the 
excellent " Introduction to English Literature," by Miss Vida 
D. Scudder, to which the present volume is, in a sense, supple- 
mentary. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE CLASSROOM 

One suggestion must be emphasized by repetition : that the 
present volume can serve only as an introduction to many 
larger and goodlier books. Especially after Irving is reached, 
the complete works of each author should always be at hand, 
in the classroom, while he is studied. The poems, essays, etc., 
mentioned in our text are, as a rule, naturally, those to which 
^e desire to direct teacher and student first of all. Some previ- 
ous familiarity with our favorite poets and romancers is taken 
for granted. A list of eighty subjects for special treatment 
will be found at the end of this book. Each can be discussed 
iully by the teacher, or assigned for an essay by a pupil. 



CHAPTER I 

THE PIONEERS 

I. Beginnings of Virginia 

THE first permanent settlement of Englishmen on 
the shores of the Western continent was at 
Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. When that little 
colony started forth, with high hopes of sudden 
wealth, but only to meet famine and disease, savage 
warfare, and all the desperate perils of the wilderness, 
the great Queen Elizabeth was already four years 
dead. The swift and splendid career of Shakespeare 
was nearly run. Spenser had passed away before 
the sixteenth century closed. We naturally mark 
that most glorious age of English literature with the 
names of these two unrivaled poets, just as the 
" Canterbury Tales " and " Piers Plowman " illu- 
mine their generation, two hundred years earlier. 

But the Elizabethan age is made not less remark- 
able by its men of action, especially by the great Eng- 
lish explorers, mariners, and naval heroes. Among 
them the name of Raleigh is naturally associated with Walter 
literature, and also with our continent. There was fgg^^fgi'g 
much noble prose, itself also shot through with golden 
threads of creative poetic beauty, in the Elizabethan 
age. Perhaps its most notable monument is Richard Richard 
Hakluyt's compilation, in three folio volumes, of i^2-i6i6. 
"The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, 



8 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

and Discoveries of the English Nation" (1598- 
1600). Naturally, these voyages, from the Cabots 
to Raleigh himself, were chiefly westward across the 
Atlantic. Better than any other, these quaint and 
often rough records tell how Englishmen came to 
begin the conquest of America. 

Hakluyt himself never crossed the Atlantic, 
Raleigh came as an explorer and adventurer only, 
Captain while Captain John Smith did cast in his lot, heartily 
157^1631.*^' and loyally, with the colony at Jamestown. Indeed 
that flickering beacon of Westward progress, which 
lighted the way for hesitating Pilgrims and Puritans 
in the next decades, would probably have been extin- 
guished as quickly and completely as its ill-fated 
predecessors, but for Smith's courage, foresight, 
experience, and indomitable energy. 

Nevertheless, Captain Smith actually lived in 
Virginia only two years (1607-1609). He spent the 
twenty-two years of his later life in England, and 
there all his books were published; though one later 
voyage of discovery, to be sure (1614), bore impor- 
tant fruit in a map whereon first appear the names 
of New England and Plymouth. No one calls 
Robert Louis Stevenson a Samoan, or sets off from 
English literature any of his books published in exile. 
Much less can such an appropriation of British 
genius be attempted in the case of Captain Smith. 
Yet, "A True Relation" and other works were 
indeed written this side the sea, in 1607-1608. The 
experiences here vividly set forth, the heroic quali- 
ties of Smith himself, are of vital importance in any 
chronicle of our national growth. Here, then, we 
may say, begins that gradual divergence from the 



THE PIONEERS 9 

poetry and prose of insular English life that leads 
to our national literature. 

Professor Tyler, in his exhaustive and final book 
upon our colonial literary life, quotes from Smith, 
with enthusiasm, this strong and beautiful sentence, 
characterizing the colony in Virginia, and written 
there, '' So then here is a place, a nurse for soldiers, 
a practice for mariners, a trade for merchants, a 
reward for the good ; and, that which is most of all, 
a business, most acceptable to God, to bring such 
poor infidels to the knowledge of God and His holy 
gospel." This glimpse of mingled piety and thrift 
is certainly a most English picture. It will remind 
us, too, how rarely any of these gentlemen adven- 
turers foresaw any break,* for them or their children, 
with English allegiance, citizenship, and interest 
generally. Young Englishmen came to Virginia 
then as they go out to India now, to return with a 
fortune. No families came with Smith, while in 
the Mayflower women and children made half the 
company. 

When George Sandys, British traveler, scholar, and George 
versifier, completed on the banks of the James in i57°7_i6i4. 
1621-1624 his rhymed version of Ovid's " Metamor- 
phoses," we may be sure he thought little of any 
critics nearer than London and Cambridge-on-the- 
Cam. He spent here only those three of his sixty- 
seven years. He was doubtless a homesick exile, 
never dreaming of an American national literature, 
nor indeed of an American nation. Yet for us he 
has an importance and interest as the first literary 
man who lived and wrote on this continent. Indeed, 
he was a very successful author ; his work passed 



10 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

through eight editions in the eighteenth century, and 
was a favorite, not only of the public generally, but 
of Pope, while Dry den betrays his jealousy by sweep- 
ing strictures. What was said above about the 
classic origins of our culture is curiously illustrated 
by this first American author, a loyal Englishman, 
translating, out of the original Latin, our chief 
extant collection of romantic Hellenic myths. 

One of Captain Smith's early works is a letter 
to the stockholders in the London company which 
" promoted " the colony. From these thrifty people 
bitter complaints had come over, because the gold of 
the Indies was not promptly pouring in to pay rich 
returns upon their investment. The fearless captain 
gives a vivid idea of the hardships and grievous 
needs in the colony, and closes curtly, " As yet you 
must not look for any profitable returns." The ocean 
was evidently making already a rift, destined to grow 
wider, between these far-off pioneers and those who 
"held the rope." 

Yet there was, apparently, a far richer cargo of 
unminted gold sent back, in those very first years, 
sent to the one of all mankind best able to give it 
the form that should make it tenfold more precious, 
and indestructible forever. In June, 1609, the flag- 
ship of a fleet carrying five hundred fresh colonists 
to Virginia was wrecked on one of the Bermudas. 
After terrible hardships they succeeded in building 
two rude pinnaces in which they reached Jamestown. 
Their lugubrious story was promptly written out, and 
sent to England for publication, by William Strachey, 
afterward governor of the colony, but of whom 
hardly anything else is known. He who reads this 



THE PIONEERS 11 

thrilling narrative will find it difficult to reject the 
belief that it furnished many suggestions for Shake- Shake- 
speare's "Tempest." In that play, it will be recalled, ^^xempesV 
occurs the one line of Shakespeare which clearly i^ii. 
alludes to this hemisphere : — 

" To fetch dew from the still-vext Bermoothes.'* 

From Strachey also we get our first glimpse of little 
Pocahontas, as a hoydenish tomboy romping with 
the children of Jamestown. 

When the trade in tobacco lifted the hard-pressed 
Virginian colonists so suddenly into affluence, it was 
still to England that the}^ long turned for the few 
books of which they felt the need. Thither their 
sons went for higher education, social polish, or the 
more refined forms of dissipation. Class distinctions 
were deeply drawn. The wealthy planters formed 
a superior social clan, which was greatly enriched by 
the cavalier emigration while the Puritan Common- 
wealth ruled England. From this "tidewater aris- 
tocracy," in after years, some of the great statesmen 
of the Revolutionary epoch were to spring. 

Almost coincident with the publishing of Cotton 
Mather's "Ecclesiastical History of New England," 
best known as the "Magnalia Christi," there ap- 
peared in London a modest, well-written book 
by a Virginia planter, which gives, even now, an 
enjoyable picture of the easy-going Southern life. 
Robert Beverley's " History of the Present State of Robert 
Virginia " opens with a brief historical chronicle ; but iq^^ijIq, 
the latter two thirds of the moderate-sized work he 
devoted to a description of the natural products, of 
the natives and of their life, of the actual social con- 



12 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



"William 

Byrd, 

1674-1744. 



Social con- 
ditions in 
Virginia. 



ditions then prevailing in the colony. Written to 
supersede an antiquated and generally untruthful 
chapter on Virginia in a book then recently issued, 
this work of Beverley's is a vigorous and highly suc- 
cessful defense of his own well-beloved people and 
land. It is the more deserving of revival and wider 
attention, because so little record of early life in the 
Southern colonies has been transmitted to us. That 
form of Anglo-Saxon civilization which produced 
almost all the leading statesmen of the Revolutionary 
and early constitutional periods certainly demands 
our fuller comprehension. 

Not a few manuscripts of this long silent period 
may yet throw welcome light upon an important 
historical epoch. A typical and interesting figure is 
Col. William Byrd, who at his death in 1744 held 
180,000 acres of land in Virginia and North Carolina. 
His library of 4000 volumes was doubtless the best 
private collection in the Southern colonies. His 
account of the running of the state boundary line 
through the Dismal Swamp, in 1727, is the most 
valuable of his many readable papers, now collected 
and well edited by J. S. Bassett. 

But it is not in Virginia, nor in the South gener- 
ally, that the chief intellectual currents of the sev- 
enteenth or eighteenth century run. The planter, 
supreme in his own domain, amusing himself with 
hunting, racing, gaming, or provincial politics, was 
rarely reminded of his own illiteracy. The clergyman 
was often domiciled as his chaplain, and shared his 
dissipations. The sturdy, ambitious, active-minded 
middle class, the stay of true democracies, perishes 
in the atmosphere of feudal slavery. Governor 



THE PIONEERS 13 

Berkeley in 1670 thanked God that they had *'no 
free schools nor printing" in Virginia. Colleges 
and newspapers came late. In fact, even down to 
the time of the Civil War, at least, there were always 
hundreds of young Southerners in the great colleges 
of the Northeast. In our own day, indeed, the genial 
writers of Southern birth find their audience, as well 
as their publishers, in the North and West. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

A selection from Hakluyt's voyages has recently been edited 
by E. J. Payne. 

Strachey's "History of Travaile into Virginia Britannia," 
first printed by the Hakluyt Society, London, in 1849. Copious 
extracts from his doleful tale of shipwreck are given by Tyler, 
pp. 43-45, and Stedman Library, Vol. I. 

The writings of Captain John Smith are now collected in one 
volume with valuable notes, in the edition of Arber, Birming- 
ham, 1884, the "English Scholar's Library." See also C. D. 
Warner's "Captain John Smith." 

Miss Mary Johnston's romances of early Virginian life can 
hardly be called " historical " at all. The extant letter of John 
Rolfe, excusing his marriage (Stedman, Vol. I, pp. 17-21), for 
instance, is curiously unlike the courtly and chivalric walking 
gentleman in " To Have and to Hold." 

SUBJECTS FOR SPECIAL STUDY 

The relation of Strachey's shipwreck to the scene in Shake- 
speare's " Tempest " is a suitable problem for direct comparative 
study. 

The Pocahontas story is the one notable romantic chapter in 
our early annals. The most famous incident, her intervention 
to save Captain Smith's life, is mentioned first by the captain 
years afterward, when the "Lady Rebecca," as she was then 
called, was herself in England. The truthfulness of this ac- 
count, and indeed of Smith's writings generally, is a question 
always in order. Here John Fiske's " Old Virginia and Her 
Neighbors " has an especially interesting defense of Smith's 
veracity. The champion is fearless, but his cause desperate. 



14 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

The reasons for the complete absence of an early native liter- 
ature in the South are well stated by Professor Tyler (" History," 
etc., Vol. I, pp. 80-92), and suggest a comparative study of our 
Puritan and Virginian civilizations. 



II. Plymouth Plantation 

It was perhaps fortunate that the first heroic 
settlement on the bleak shores of New England was 
made by a company of extreme Separatists, alienated 
from political attachment to England, in both State 
and Church, by persecution, and by the enforced 
exile of a dozen years in Holland. Their example 
and precept no doubt hastened that independence of 
New England generally which the distance, the ne- 
cessity of self-reliance, and the stubborn self -poised 
Puritan nature itself rendered all but inevitable. 
The distinction between Pilgrim and Puritan, indeed, 
though real, was never radical, and faded out in the 
first century. The Pilgrim extremists of Plymouth 
colony had even learned in Leyden — not true toler- 
ance indeed, but — a greater humanity than their 
Puritan neighbors. For instance, their treatment of 
Roger Williams and of the Quakers was compara- 
tively gentle. Their annexation to Massachusetts 
in 1692 was peacefully accomplished, and turned out 
a politic and natural union. Hence Plymouth col- 
ony would have left little separate record in the life 
of New England, but for one precious book, William 
William Bradford's history " Of Plimouth Plantation," per- 
S-1657. versely called in England, "The Log of the May- 
flower.'''' 

Bradford is the central figure among the Pilgrims. 
He was a refined gentleman, a lifelong student of 



THE PIONEERS 15 

modern and ancient languages. From 1621 to his 
death, in 1657, he was governor of the colony, except 
for five years when he refused to serve. His history 
goes back to the origin of the Separatist movement in 
England, and is brought down to 1646. The narrow, 
heroic nature of the man, his undoubting confidence 
that his little folk are God's peculiar people and the 
sole possessors of full inspired truth, glimmer from 
almost every page. There is much dry theologic 
argument, much petty squabbling with the financial 
supporters of the company, here set forth at length. 
There is little or no artistic charm, but much dignity 
and pathos in simplicity. Despite the spelling, which 
is perverse and complicated even for that time, it is 
a book richly worthy of study, even in its beautiful 
original script. The final parting from the brethren 
in Delft is thus characterized, " So they left y* 
goodly & pleasante citie, which had been ther rest- 
ingplace near 12 years ; but they knew they were 
pilgrimes, & looked not much on those things, but lift 
up their eyes to y® heavens, their dearest cuntrie, 
and quieted their spirits." Bradford's careful refer- 
ence to " Hebrews xi " at the word " pilgrimes " was 
not needed to remind us, that even before King 
James's Version the English Bible of Wyclif and his 
successors had been the chief literary inspiration of 
Lollard, Puritan, and Separatist. 

Some other works of Bradford and of his friend Edward 
Winslow are extant, notably a joint diary of that JIq^Jq^' 
terrible first year of the colony. A clear glimpse of 
the spiritual man, Bradford, and a final test of the 
literary skill possessed by this most cultivated of the 
Pilgrims, will be found in the verses left at his 



16 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



death (Stedman, Vol. I, pp. 115-116). In modern 
spelling, they begin : — 

" From my years young in days of youth 
God did make known to me his truth, 
And call'd me from my native place 
For to enjoy the means of grace." 

Every young American may profitably learn by heart 
these simple, earnest, dignified lines, — thirty -four in 
all. But it is difficult to call a single verse of it 
poetry. The nearest to a picture is perhaps the 
couplet : — 

^' In fears and wants, in weal and woe, 
A pilgrim, passed I to and fro." 



Charles 
Deane, 
1815-1889. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

After being freely used and almost copied by several native 
historians of the next generations, Bradford's manuscript history 
mysteriously vanished. It was rediscovered in the library of 
the Bishop of London, and was first printed by the Massachu- 
setts Historical Society, from a transcript of the original, in 
1856. This edition has excellent and copious notes by the late 
Charles Deane. A facsimile of the manuscript appeared in 
London, 1896, with introduction by J. A. Doyle. Finally, in 
1898, the manuscript itself was restored to Massachusetts, and 
the sumptuous volume of the state printers gives, not only a 
verbatim text of the history, but a most interesting account of 
the circumstances under which it returned to New England. 
See also Tyler, Vol. I, pp. 116-126. Extracts in Stedman, 
Vol. I, pp. 291-303. 

" Stan dish of Standish," and other romances, by the late 
Jane (Good- Mrs. Jane G. Austin, are based on a very intimate knowledge 
win) Austin, of Plymouth and its strongly conservative local traditions. 
1831-1894. ■ ^ ^^ 

TOPICS FOR STUDY 

The value of these grave annals of Bradford is almost wholly 
historical. Yet they may be profitably read in especial quest 
of picturesque description or poetic passages, or of information 



THE PIONEERS 17 

on the social conditions. Careful students of Longfellow's 
" Miles Standish " will find here the plain facts set forth very 
differently. Similar comparisons may be made for Hawthorne's 
" Morton of Merry Mount," Longfellow's " Ballad of Sir Chris- 
topher " (Gardiner), etc. Bradford's account of Morton, and 
Morton's pungent description of the Pilgrims' dealings with Thomas 
himself, are both quoted by Stedman, and make capital material Morton, 
for a pair of theses, in defense of the two sides. 1576-1646. 



III. The Character of the Puritan 

The Puritan exodus, during the years when 
Charles I reigned without a Parliament (1629-1640), 
created at once in Massachusetts a wealthy and pros- 
perous commonwealth of fifteen thousand souls. Fi- 
nancially they were from the first independent; their 
company and its officers crossed the sea with Win- 
throp. The conditions this side the Atlantic made 
them practically Separatists in Church and State no 
less promptly. Few, indeed, ever looked back with 
longing toward England. A representative legisla- 
ture was at once organized. A league with three 
other smaller but independent neighbor colonies, 
Plymouth, Connecticut, New Haven, so early as 
1643, clearly foreshadowed even the present union of 
states, and gave to John Winthrop the prophetic and 
well-deserved title of President. The Civil War in 
England stopped this tide of immigration. 

From the thirty thousand folk then in New Eng- 
land, it is computed that twenty million living 
Americans are descended. Until after our own 
Revolution, the North was essentially the land of 
the Puritan. The relatively small alien elements, 
such as the Dutch of New Amsterdam, the Hugue- 
not refugees, the Scotch Presbyterians, were largely 



of Paritanic 
traits. 



18 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

absorbed. Even the multifarious forces that have 
filled the great West in later days were led and con- 
trolled by the Yankee. His successful fight for a 
" Free Kansas " is typical of a still larger conquest. 
Persistence To his speech, his political and social traditions, the 
later immigrants have conformed, far more nearly 
than to any other standard. Of course, in the pro- 
cess, as in the fiercer struggle between two kindred 
types of Teutonic men in the Civil War, the victor 
also has been profoundly modified. Yet the fact will 
be generally conceded that the Puritan has been and 
is, on the whole, the most prominent element in our 
national life, and especially in our literature. 

From this New England race were born, and 
under its traditions were bred, in the nineteenth 
century, nearly all the chief figures of our first great 
literary epoch, Bryant and Emerson, Hawthorne 
and Longfellow, Lowell and Holmes, Channing and 
Parker, Bancroft and Parkman, Webster and Phil- 
lips. To understand them at all, we must form 
some conception of New England life from the 
beginning. 

Conversely, since nearly all the best literature is 
intensely national, we may turn confidently to these 
very men of a later day for the most vivid pictures 
of our ancestors' life. Nor are we to think merely 
of such historians as Parkman, Palfrey, and Fiske. 
Hawthorne's " Scarlet Letter," and many of his 
shorter studies, depict that early life with the 
idealizing vividness of creative genius. Whittier's 
" Snowbound," and his quiet prose romance, " Leaves 
from Margaret Smith's Journal," are a reminder that 
the once persecuted Quaker was never a real alien at 



THE PIONEERS 19 

all, in blood, speech, or moral quality. And so, 
though America made no important addition to the 
world's literature during the seventeenth century, 
yet the first question that awaits us is, nevertheless, 
What was this Puritan stock and civilization? In- 
cidentally, we ought also to see why it was that 
belles lettres came so late in the story of their con- 
quest over a continent. 

The immigrants of 1629-1640 were in blood, 
culture, creed, the most homogeneous body, perhaps, 
that ever created a new state. In blood they were 
all English, the overwhelming majority Anglo- 
Saxon, from the East Anglian counties, or, in a less 
degree, from the sturdy maritime stock of Devon 
and its neighbor shires. (Miss Scudder makes it 
clear that the Saxon contributed far more to the 
national life, but relatively much less to imaginative 
literature than the Kelt and the Norman, between 
whom he stands.) Their clergymen had been care- 
fully, though narrowly, educated, many being grad- 
uates, in particular, from Emmanuel College of 
Cambridge. The Puritan was earnestly and utterly 
opposed to the whole courtly literature, especially to 
the drama. Indeed, the unworthy and immoral suc- 
cessors of the great Elizabethan theaters were closed 
altogether, as soon as he became master in England. 
Even of Shakespeare's plays, it is said, not a single 
copy can be traced in New England for a century 
and more. Milton himself, the lofty but lonely poet 
of Puritanism, was almost equally unknown this side 
the sea, until long after his own time. 

The splendid achievements of the organized Chris- 
tian Church in Europe through a thousand years 



20 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

were, to our forefathers, only a tale of fatal sin and 
error. The literatures of Greece and Rome, or of 
modern times so far as they then existed, were hardly 
less an abomination to them. They knew and loved 
Harvard one book : the Bible. The Harvard College they 
1636?^^' created so promptly was in no sense a center of free 
scientific investigation and humane culture. The 
Greek and Hebrew so diligently taught there was 
concentrated upon the exposition of the Old and 
New Testaments. The college was founded, indeed, 
to supply an educated orthodox clergy, and to con- 
vert and train to godly life the Indian youth. 

The intention of the fathers was to found in the 
wilderness a theocratic commonwealth of the Jewish 
type. Full citizenship was at first accorded in most 
towns only to orthodox church members. Even 
legislative action was often forestalled, and bluntly 
dictated, by the preacher of the "election sermon." 
These perils, however, brought their own correc- 
tion. The need of common defense without and 
helpfulness within, even the inherent sense of fair 
play, soon widened the suffrage to householders of 
any or no faith. Real tolerance, to be sure, was rare 
and of slow growth, but to give men room to dis- 
agree was the land made wide. Often a whole 
parish pushed out to seek a new home in the wilder- 
ness. Not merely Roger Williams's colony, indeed, 
but many more orthodox towns had their origin in 
theological dissensions. The minister himself, too, 
was neither regarded as directly inspired nor con- 
secrated irrevocably for life. He could be punished 
for crime, deposed for grievous heresy of doctrine ; 
and the final decision as to truth or error lay with a 



THE PIONEERS 21 

legislature which was, after all, not clerical or per- 
manent, but civil, elective, and constantly changing. 

The Puritanic temper was not, perhaps even now 
is not, a joyous one. To our fathers all pleasures 
and amusements were, if not in themselves sinful, 
always dangerous enticements from the narrow road 
to salvation. Even Bunyan meant to write a vivid 
sermon only, and never suspected how many a boy 
would read it, quite untroubled by the moral or the 
real meaning. The personified powers of evil were 
more actual, near, and energetic, seemingly, to the 
Puritan mind than the spirits of joy and gladness. 
Perhaps this gloomy and serious view of life is a 
trait of the whole Anglo-Saxon race. " Art for 
art's sake " is a maxim we still distrust. Under the 
mystical harmonies of a Poe, we demand still the 
larger evidence of insight, of revelation, of truth. 
Hawthorne is our master, not chiefly because his 
every sentence has his dreamy charm, but because 
he has most deeply explored the heart of man. The 
beauty in any human creation seems to us to consist 
largely, if not chiefly, in its evident usefulness for 
the education and uplifting of men. 

This utilitarian quality is indeed the prevailing 
trait of New England literature, even down to Low- 
ell's time. It has made the "Artist of the Beauti- 
ful" all too rare among us, and has cast suspicion 
even upon his most precious work when at last he 
has come indeed. It is of " Hosea Biglow " that 
his shrewdest and merriest critic, Dr. Holmes, 
speaks : — 

" Whose play is all earnest, whose wit is the edge 
(With a beetle behind) of a sham-splitting wedge." 



22 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

Other prominent traits of the early Puritan are an 
intense local, rather than national or world-wide, 
human attachment, unquestioning faith in his own 
social and moral standards, a lack of aesthetic delight 
in the fine arts, an absence of enthusiasm for music 
and romance, for color and form. But perhaps the 
most striking quality was his earnest conviction, that 
his neighbor's affairs were no less his own, and should 
be duly regulated in every particular. Still, the 
Calvinistic sense of individual responsibility to God 
leads logically at last to individual freedom in action 
and thought. 

It is no hostile or alien critic who confesses that 
all these tendencies seem to have survived in large 
measure to our own day. Names change, but motives 
are essentially the same. The Abolitionist or the 
Mugwump no longer labors, avowedly, for the glory 
of God and the salvation of his neighbor's soul ; but 
his moral conviction, and the action that springs 
from it, would be perfectly intelligible, certainly to 
Bradford, Winthrop, or Vane, perhaps even to 
Endicott and Dudley, could they rise from their 
graves to-day. 

This thrifty, hard-working Puritan folk of Anglo- 
Saxon stock, with their narrow, joyless creed, their 
dread of mere pleasure and luxury or culture as 
enticements of the Evil One, their utter rejection of 
divine right for king or priest, their devout unswerv- 
ing faith in the Hebrew Bible, lacked for many a 
year either leisure or desire for poetry and fine arts 
generally. Emerson says, " The necessity of clear- 
ing the forest, laying out town and street, and build- 
ing every house and barn and fence, . . . made the 



THE PIONEERS 23 

whole population poor." Even a Hawthorne, we 
remember, could shape no romance as he toiled 
heavily in the barnyard of Brook Farm. 

Then the repeated transplanting, across the narrow 
and the wider seas, had left little trace of the pic- 
turesque folklore and legend that lingers yet in the 
old German chimney corner. Classic myth and 
saintly mediaeval tradition, as was said just now, 
were alike forbidden as things of evil. Nor did the 
trackless forests and strange painted folk of this 
New World appeal powerfully, as a rule, to their 
fancy. The "noble red man" has been but a mur- A people of 
derous, yelling fiend to most border folk in each o^®^<^^- 
generation. Little within or without aroused the 
Puritan's imagination, his sense of the picturesque, 
excepting always the glories of the New Jerusalem. 
From the English Bible, indeed, history, romance, 
poetry, color, and music, crept unsuspected into his 
heart and life. But even so, creative art was long 
absent. The rapid sketch of literature in the first 
two centuries which must now be outlined is but a 
confession of poverty, hardly even of effort, or of con- 
scious lack. Few left so much as copious diaries or 
family chronicles for the eager eyes of posterity. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

PaHrey's "History of New England" is still the standard 
authority. See John Fiske's wider treatment of the coloniz- 
ing period in his "Beginnings of New England." Much curi- 
ous detail as to the outward conditions of the early colonial life 
is collected in the attractive volumes of Alice Morse Earle. 

Besides numerous artistic sketches, such as "Endicott and 
the Red Cross," "Maypole of Merry Mount," "The Gentle 
Boy," " The Gray Champion," " Legends of the Province 



24 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

House," "Main Street," etc., Hawthorne wrote a brief his- 
tory of New England more picturesque than many more 
learned works. His sense of the contrast, and yet of a cer- 
tain kinship, between his Puritan forefathers and himself 
may be felt especially in his introduction to the "Scarlet 
Letter." Whittier's "Margaret Smith's Journal" has been 
mentioned in the text. Mrs. Child's youthful book, " Hobo- 
mok," is almost forgotten. 



SUBJECTS FOR ESSAYS 

The costumes, customs, daily life of the Puritans, especially 
as contrasted with our own, can be graphically treated by 
teacher or student. 



CHAPTER II 
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

I. WiNTHROP's Diary 



JOHN WINTHROP, first governor of Massachu- John 

Wint] 
1587-1649. 



^ setts and first president of federated colonies in ™*?JS*' 



New England, is by many historical students ranked 
beside Washington as a father of our common coun- 
try. His diary, begun on shipboard off the Isle of 
Wight, March 29, 1630, and continued with unflag- 
ging care until a few months before his death in 1649, 
is the chief storehouse of facts for the early history 
of the colony. The writer, a most patient, dutiful, 
and wise leader of men, is clearly, though quite un- 
consciously, revealed in this long chronicle. It has 
even less literary form than Bradford's history, unless 
its rugged simplicity be accounted the one fitting 
style for its homely and unpretentious materials. 
The drowning of his son is given one line. The 
death of " a cow at Plymouth and a goat at Boston, 
with eating Indian corn," may remind us that neigh- 
borly sympathy began early among us. Severe 
critics of college morals in our own day should 
ponder the entry for June 5, 1644: "Two of our 
ministers' sons, being students in the college, robbed 
two dwelling-houses in the night of some £15, 
Being found out, they were ordered by the governor 
of the college to be there whipped, which was per- 

25 



26 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

formed by the president himself — yet they were 
about twenty years of age ; and, after, they were 
brought into the court and ordered to twofold satis- 
faction, or to serve so long for it. We had as yet no 
particular punishment for burglary." 

Yet, when larger questions arise, we see clearly the 
philosophic statesman. Embodied in the journal of 
the year 1645 is the best extant specimen of the 
grave Puritanic oratory : Winthrop's speech from 
the magistrate's bench, after his acquittal upon a 
charge of exceeding his powers as deputy governor 
for that year. Especially famous is his definition for 
the two sorts of liberty. As opposed to the moral 
freedom wherewith the Truth maketh us free, he 
describes the liberty, to do evil as well as good, which 
we share with beasts, and stigmatizes it, in scholarly 
wise, with a brief paraphrase from Terence, Omnes 
sumuB licentia deteriores (We are all by license 
debased). 

Winthrop's inner life is still better seen in the 
brief tract, "A Model of Christian Charity," com- 
posed, on the voyage in the Arhella in 1629, for the 
guidance of the colonists. His noble wife, Margaret, 
is also clearly revealed to us in their correspondence. 
It is interesting to note that the son, the second 
John Winthrop, who parted company with his father 
as fearlessly as that father had left home and luxury 
for freedom and conscience, was but a scholarly man 
of action ; but among their many worthy descendants 
there have been at least two highly gifted men of 
letters, Robert C. Winthrop, the biographer of the 
great Puritan, and Theodore Winthrop, one of the 
earliest and most lamented martyrs of the Civil War. 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 27 

II. The Cobbler of Agawam 

Few indeed of our early books are amusing, least Nathaniel 
of all the ponderous essays in controversial theology 15-^^1653, 
which form the overwhelming majority among them. 
"We can hardly pass by, then, the Reverend Nathaniel 
Ward of Ipswich, better known as the " Simple Cob- 
bler of Agawam." Yet his stay in Massachusetts was 
a mere episode. Graduate of Emmanuel College in 
1603, he was a notable scholar, traveler, and preacher 
when Laud's persecution drove him across the seas 
in 1634. Returning, he overtook the manuscript 
of his famous book before it was printed, in England, 
1647. There is in it little of the simple cobbler, but 
on every page is revealed a pedant, a bigot, a pessi- 
mistic grumbler. The king is hopelessly wrong, the 
hundred sects that vary from his own exact shade of 
non-conformity are all astray, English womanhood 
generally is beneath contempt, above all the least 
toleration of laxity in doctrine, of long hair or short 
skirt, is the unpardonable sin. 

Yet the book is delicious. The key is struck at 
the first word. " Either I am in an Appoplexie, or 
that man is in a Lethargic, who doth not now sensi- 
bly feele God shaking the Heavens over his head, and 
the Earth under his feet." He is indeed in a "Leth- 
argic " who lays down this little masterpiece half 
read. Milton, almost at the same moment, is 
pleading with Areopagitic dignity for freedom of 
utterance. But bigotry finds a far more piercing 
voice here : " To authorize an untruth, by a Tolera- 
tion of State, is to build a Sconce against the walls 
of Heaven, to batter God out of his Chaire." Pilate's 



28 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

doubt, "What is Truth?" never troubled this devout 
self-confidence. 

The keen-bladed cobbler bitterly resents the suspi- 
cion that he writes rather " merrily than seriously. 
... I write with all the indignation I can." Yet 
even the "nugiferous Gentledame," who had followed 
too promptly the court fashion in dress, must have bit 
her lip and giggled over this raking fire of billings- 
gate : " I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, 
the product of a quarter of a cypher, the epitome of 
nothing, fitter to be kickt, if shee were of a kickable 
substance, than either honour'd or humour'd." 

It is evident that the grim old Jeremiah himself 
never smiled, save with sardonic grin. His bigotry 
is abominable. His wide knowledge of the classic 
poets only misleads him into fierce macaronic sen- 
tences, half-Latin, half-English, or the most pedantic 
of invented words. He has no aesthetic taste. Yet 
the book should be read, and cannot but be enjoyed 
by any earnest student of literature or critic of style. 
Its literary lesson is that sparkling wit can wing 
almost any arrow of speech. When to Puritanic 
fervor and satiric force was added real humane cul- 
ture, artistic taste, and a worthy cause, the Cobbler 
found his lineal descendant in Hosea Biglow. 

III. Roger Williams 

Roger Of the sermons and controversial pamphlets in 

1600^1684. theology, written by such men as Ward, and often in 

somewhat such temper, by far the larger part of our 

early "literature" consisted. It is remote indeed 

from the truly humane spirit.- Roger Williams 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 29 

himself, with all his tolerance in act, was in the 
thickest of the wordy fray. He would not have the 
Quakers persecuted by law, but he undertook to 
refute their heresies in fierce polemics, under such 
titles as " George Fox digged out of his Burrows." 
Yet it is inspiring to see this noble figure, pleading 
fearlessly for universal toleration, in a century when 
such conditions were actually to be found only in 
Holland. His final reply to Cotton should be a classic, 
like Milton's plea for freedom of printing. One is 
doubly glad to find, therefore, among Williams's two 
thousand printed pages, many a sentence noble in 
form and music as in meaning, touched even, at 
times, with conscious picturesqueness. 

"The wilderness is a clear resemblance of the 
world, where greedy and furious men persecute and 
devour the harmless and innocent, as the wild beasts 
pursue and devour the hinds and roes." A quainter 
humor and a happier smile plays over the phrase that 
describes " us poor grasshoppers hopping and skip- 
ping from branch to twig in this vale of tears." His 
clearest single utterance, which is also nobly poetic, 
philosophically true and wise, is found in a letter to 
his people of Providence, written in 1655. He there 
likens a commonwealth to " many hundred souls in 
one ship, whose weal and woe is common. . . . The 
commander ought to . . . command that justice, 
peace, sobriety, be kept and practised." He may 
punish mutiny, compel personal service of all passen- 
gers in a crisis. But they should not be "forced 
to come to the ship's prayers, nor compelled from 
their own particular prayers or worship, if they prac- 
tise any." We cite the passage here, simply as an 



30 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

excellent sustained simile ; but it is no wonder that 
an age which attempted to deny, and fight against, 
such elemental truths found little leisure for culture 
and poetry. 

IV. The Bay Psalm Book 

A printing press was first set up at Cambridge, in 
1639. The first book printed and published in 
America (1640) was in verse, though not poetry. 
It was a translation of David's Psalms, made by the 
" chief divines in the country," says Cotton Mather ; 
that is, it is the mature joint effort of our most 
educated men of New England in that generation. 
Their version is characterized fairly enough in the 
"Encyclopaedia Britannica" as "the worst of many 
bad." The Preface, by Richard Mather, who was the 
first of the family " dynasty " of Mathers, should by 
all means be read. It emphasizes the "religious 
care and faithful endeavor to keep close to the original 
text." " God's altar needs not our polishings." They 
had heard, perhaps, Milton's command : — 

" Let your silver chime 
Move in melodious time, 
And let the bass of Heav'n's deep organ blow," 

but they could not, or did not, heed such a bidding. 
Whether they read Milton or not, those unmelodious 
"divines" had before them the noble prose of the 
King James's Version, which should have been sacred 
from such torture as this : — 

" But as for those that seek my soule to bring it to an end. 
They shall into the lower parts of the earth downe descend. 
By the hand of the sword also they shall be made to fall : 
And they be for a portion unto the foxes shall." 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 31 

V. Anne Bradstkeet 
" The first professional poet of New England was Anne 
a woman," says Professor Tyler. The daughter of SdstTeev 
Governor Dudley, she was familiar with the best 1612-1672. 
culture of both Englands. If she had set down in 
simple, straightforward fashion the impressions made 
on her by the strange new life, our debt of gratitude 
would be great. But even the sea is " Thetis " in 
her bombastic rhyme ; no bird sings save "Philomel." 
Her poems are dreary with pedantic learning; of 
nature we get hardly a glimpse. It is impossible 
to keep awake while, for instance, the four elements 
debate at unbounded length their respective value to 
the world, or her " Four Monarchies " unroll a rhymed 
chronicle of all ancient history. Yet her ear for 
rhythm is good, her command of words all but un- 
limited. A few of her sincerest utterances, nat- 
urally religious, make us suspect that under due 
guidance she might indeed have been a singer. But 
instead she feels that 

" These are the days the Church's foes to crush, 
To root out Popelings, head, tail, branch, and rush." 

It appears to us that these stern men and women 
strangely missed the charm of life, without and 
within. Mistress Bradstreet's verses, " Longing 
for Heaven," seem faintly conscious of that very 

fact : — 

" As weary pilgrim now at rest 
Hugs with delight his silent nest : 
His wasted limbs now lie full soft, 
That miry steps have trod full oft : 
Blesses himself to think upon 
His dangers past, and travails done.'* 



32 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

Among Mistress Bradstreet's lineal descendants was 
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

VI. Michael Wiggles worth 

Michael A dyspeptic, fragile body, an ascetic, gloomy spirit, 

^ rth^^^" ^ narrow, grewsome imagination, and a fatal fluency 
1631-1705. in ignoble forms of versification, were the equipment 
of the one really popular poet in early New England. 
His account of the last judgment in the " Day of 
Doom " seems to us unutterably sacrilegious. Yet 
it had in America a far greater sway, even into 
the present century, than " Paradise Lost " ever at- 
tained. How many bereft mothers' tears must have 
been doubly embittered, because to those that had 
died, sinless and unbaptized, in earliest infancy, the 
divine Judge declares, after fluent arguments pro and 

contra : — 

" But unto you I shall allow 
The easiest room in Hell." 

The doctrine was of course anything but new, yet 
Wigglesworth's thin, shrill rhymes drive it home to 
the heart, as Dante's calm and stately verse never 
could. In another poem he utters a curious and 
widespread belief about our continent, a belief 
perhaps echoed in the master's " Tempest " : — 

" A waste and howling wilderness, 
Where none inhabited 
But hellish fiends, and brutish men, 
That devils worshiped." 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 33 

VII. Samuel Sew all 

It is a relief to set just here the portly, happy samuei 
figure of Judge Sewall. His diary of over fifty ?f!^l!:oA 
years depicts a social life provincial indeed, narrower 
and shallower than the times of the founders; but 
while he courts his ancient sweethearts with sweet- 
meats, we get glimpses of a slowly mellowing folk, of 
staid merrymakings and timid luxury. His share 
in the witchcraft frenzy Sewall solemnly and pub- 
licly repented, and recalled, ever after, by a solitary 
annual fast and vigil. His brief antislavery pam- 
phlet, " The Selling of Joseph," proclaims him the 
forerunner of Garrison, if not of Bellamy. Indeed 
there is a truer ring than Jefferson's own in his 
declaration, "All men, as they are the sons of 
Adam, are coheirs, and have equal rights unto 
liberty and all other outward comforts of life." 
Again, in another controversial pamphlet, the 
judge did his best to throw open heaven's gates 
even to women. 

In this book, however, Sewall should appear, 
because once, in his " Phsenomena Queedam Apoca- 
lyptica" (1697), he was inspired to a really poetic 
utterance, perhaps the first on our soil. Whittier's 
graceful rhymes do not improve the refreshing sim- 
plicity and direct vision of the original : — 

" As long as Plum Island shall faithfully keep the 
commanded post, notwithstanding all the hectoring 
words and hard blows of the proud and boisterous 
ocean ; as long as any salmon or sturgeon shall 
swim in the streams of Merrimac, or any perch or 
pickerel in Crane Pond ; as long as the sea-fowl 



34 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

shall know the time of their coming, and not neg- 
lect seasonably to visit the places of their acquaint- 
ance ; as long as any cattle shall be fed with the 
grass growing in the meadows, which do humbly 
bow down themselves before Turkey-Hill ; as long 
as any sheep shall walk upon Old-Town Hills, 
and shall from thence pleasantly look down upon 
the River Parker, and the fruitful marshes lying 
beneath ; as long as any free and harmless doves 
shall find a white oak or other tree within the 
township, to perch, or feed, or build a careless 
nest upon, and shall voluntarily present themselves 
to perform the office of gleaners after the barley- 
harvest ; as long as Nature shall not grow old and 
dote, but shall constantly remember to give the rows 
of Indian corn their education by pairs ; so long 
shall Christians be born there, and being first made 
meet, shall from thence be translated to be made par- 
takers of the inheritance of the saints in light." 

The judge, however, is better than his time. Theo- 
logical Puritanism had grown more narrow, intolerant, 
and bitter since Winthrop, and the general revolt 
against its spiritual tyranny was inevitable. Cotton 
Mather's frenzied bigotry made Franklin a "free 
thinker." 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Winthrop's work, like Bradford's, had to wait two centuries 
for full publication. There is a good edition, in modernized 
spelling, carefully annotated, by James Savage, Boston, 1853. 
The best biography is by R. C. Winthrop, Boston, 1863. For 
the "Model of Christian Charity," see Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 
VII, 31-48. 

See also Tyler, Vol. I, pp. 128-136, and, for extracts, Stedman's 
Library, Vol. I, pp. 291-311. 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 35 

The " Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America " is edited, with 
apparent faithfulness to the original form, by David Pulsifer, 
Boston, 1843. Copious extracts will be found in Stedman's 
Library, Vol. I, pp. 276-285, and an excellent detailed study in 
Tyler, Vol. I, pp. 227-241. 

For the voluminous works of Roger Williams, see the Narra- 
gansett Club publications. Vols. I- VI. 

The " Bay Psalm Book " is published in literal reprint, Cam- 
bridge, Mass., 1862, by Dr. N. B. Shurtleff. 

Works of Anne Bradstreet, Charlestown, 1867, edited by John 
Harvard Ellis. A private edition of her poems, printed in 1897, 
contained a suggestive prefatory essay by Professor Charles 
Eliot Norton. It is a very costly and rare volume. 

Michael Wiggles worth's works are out of print. The last 
edition of his " Day of Doom " was published in New York, 1867, 
and included a memoir by J. W. Dean. 

Sewall's Diary has been carefully edited by George E. Ellis, 
D.D., and printed by the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
Fifth Series, Vols. V, VI, VII. See in Henry Cabot Lodge's 
" Studies in History," the essay " A Puritan Pepys." 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY 

Possibly a careful comparison of Whittier's treatment of 
Sewall, and of John Underbill, with the "sources" in Win- 
throp's diary and in Sewall's own records might be profitable. 
Longfellow's " New England Tragedies " may be made the basis 
of talks on the times. The teachers of American history and 
philosophy may both have a word to say on the witchcraft 
prosecutions. 



36 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES — (1600-1700) 



1600-1610 



American History 



American Literature 



1607. 



1609. 



Foundation of Jamestown by 
the London Company. 
Foundation of Quebec. 



Hudson discovered Hudson 
River. 

Champlain discovered Lake 
Champlain. 

(Pilgrims settled inLeyden.) 
1610. Discovery of Hudson's Bay. 



1608. John Smith 's ' ' True Relation 
of Such Occurrences and 
Accidents of Note as Hath 
Happened in Virginia." 



1610. William Strachey's "True 
Repertory of the Wrack and 
Redemption of Sir Thomas 
Gates." 



1611-1620 



1613. Manhattan Island occupied 
by the Dutch. 

1614. John Smith explores the New 
England coast. 



1619. First negro slaves brought to 
Virginia. 

1620. Settlement of Plymouth by 
the Pilgrims. 



1612. John Smith's Map of Vir- 
ginia. 

Strachey's " Historic of Tra- 
vaile into Virginia Bri- 
tannia" written. (First 
published in 1849, by the 
Hakluyt Society.) 



1616. John Smith's "Description 
of New England." 



1621-1630 



Nov. 9, 1620, to Dec. 18, 1621, 
"Journal of William Brad- 
ford and Edward Winslow " 
written. (Published as 
" Mourt's Relation.") 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



3T 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES — (1600-1700) 



1600-1610 



English and European Literature 



English and European History 



1598-1600. Hakluyt's " Voyages." 
1603. Jonson's "Sejanus." 

1605. Bacon's "Advancement of 
Learning." 



1603. Death of Elizabeth. 
1603-1625. James I. 
1605. Gunpowder Plot. 



1611-1620 



1611. 


Chapman's translation of 

the " Iliad." 

King James's Version of the 

Bible. 




1612. 


Webster's "White Devil" 
acted. 




1613. 


Drayton's "Polyolbion." 




1614. 


Raleigh's "History of the 
World." 




1616. 


Shakespeare died. 


1618. Raleigh executed. 

Thirty Years' War began in 
Germany. 


1620. 


Bacon's "Novum Organum." 





1621-1630 



1621. Burton's " Anatomy of Mel- 
ancholy." 

1622. First English newspaper. 



88 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 





1621-1630- 


- Continued 


Amerioan History 


American Literature 






1621-1624. George Sandys com- 








pleted in Virginia his trans- 








lation of Ovid. 


1623. 


New Amsterdam founded by 
the Dutch. 






1624. 


Virginia made a royal colony. 


1624. 


John Smith's " General His- 
tory of Virginia, New Eng- 
land, and the Summer 

Isles." 


1628. 


Salem, Mass., founded by 
Endicott. 






1630. 


Boston founded by Win- 


1630. 


March 29, John Winthrop's 




throp. 




Diary begun. 

William Bradford's "His- 
tory of Plymouth Planta- 
tion " begun. 

John Smith's " True Travels, 
Adventures, and Observa- 
tions." 



1631-1640 



1634. Maryland colonized. 

1635. Connecticut settled. 

1636. Foundation of Harvard 
College. 

Providence founded by Roger 
Williams. 

1637. PequotWar. 

1638. New Haven founded. 

1639. First printing press set up 
in America, at Cambridge, 
Mass. 

1640. Puritan immigration ceased. 
Thirty thousand whites in 
New England. 



1634. William Wood's " New Eng- 
land Prospect." 



1637. Thomas Morton's "New 
England Canaan." 

1639. William Pierce's Almanac, 
first publication printed in 

1640. "The Bay Psalm Book," 
first bound volume printed 
in America. 



1641-1650 



1641. "The Body of Liberties" 
com piled by Nathaniel Ward . 
" A Catechism agreed upon 
by the Elders at the Desire of 
the General Court" printed 
in Cambridge. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



39 



1621 


-1630 


— Continued 


English and European Litdiature 


English and European History 


1623. First folio of Shakespeare. 

1625. Bacon's "Essays," final 
form. 

1626. Death of Bacon. 


1624. Richelieu becomes master of 
France. 

1625. Charles I becomes King of 
England. 

1628. French Huguenots surrender 
Rochelle. 

Petition of Right. 

1629. Charles I began his eleven 
years of rule without Parlia- 
ment. 

1630. Gustavus Adolphus lands in 
Germany. 



1631-1640 



1634. " Comus " acted. 

1636. Corneille's''LeCidy 

1637. Milton's "Lycidas." 
Death of Ben Jonson. 



1632. Gustavus Adolphus slain at 
Liitzen. Turning-point of 
Thirty Years' War. 



1638. Covenant in Scotland. 
1640. Long Parliament assembled. 



1641-1650 



1641. Milton published various 
spiritual pamphlets. 
Evelyn's Diary begun 
(closed, 1697). 

1642. Thomas Brovra's "Religio 
Medici." 



1641. Execution of Straiford. 



1642. Civil "War began in England. 
Death of Richelieu. 



40 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



1641-1650- 


- Continued 


American History 


American Literature 


1643. "United Colonies of New 


1643. 


Roger Williams's " Help to 


England" organized under 




the Language of the Na- 


Winthrop's presidency, by 




tives." 


Massachusetts, Plymouth, 






Connecticut, and NewHaven. 






Rhode Island and Maine ex- 






cluded. 






Immigration of cavaliers into 
Virginia. 






1644. 


Roger Williams's "Bloody 






Tenet of Persecution." 




1646. 


John Cotton's " Milk for the 
Spiritual Nourishment of 
Boston Babes in Either 
England." 




1647. 


Ward's "Simple Cobbler of 

Agawam." 

Cotton's " Bloody Tenet 










Washed." 




1649. 


John Winthrop died. 




1650. 


Anne Bradstreet's poems 
printed in England as " The 
Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung 










up in America." 



1651-1660 







1653. 


John Eliot's "Catechism in 
the Indian Language." 






1655. 


Edward Winslow died. 


1656. 


Two Quakers, women, land 
at Boston. 










1657. 


William Bradford died. 


1659. 


Two Quakers hanged in Bos- 








ton. 






1660. 


A Quaker woman, Mary 








Dyer, hanged in Boston. 








Sir William Berkeley in Vir- 








ginia. 







CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



41 



1641-1650 — Continued 



English and European Literature 


English and European History 


1642. The Puritans close the the- 


1642. Death of Galileo. 


aters. 






1643. Accession of Louis XTV. 


1644. Milton's "Areopagitica." 




1645. Fuller's " Good Thoughts." 


1645. Execution of Laud. 


Waller's Poems. 


Battle of Naseby. 




End of Civil War. 




Westminster Confession of 




Faith. 




1646. Charles I flees to Scotland. 


1647. George Fox began to preach. 


1647. Scots deliver Charles I to 




Parliament. 


1648. Herrick's " Hesperides." 


1648. End of Thirty Years' War. 


1649. Lovelace's " Lucasta." 


1649. Trial and execution of 




Charles I. 




Monarchy and House of 


. 


Lords abolished. 


1650. Baxter's "Saint's Everlast- 




ing Rest." 




Jeremy Taylor's "Holy 




Living." 





1651-1660 



1651. 


Milton's "Defensio pro Pop- 
ulo Anglicano." 
Hobbes's " Leviathan." 
Jeremy Taylor's "Holy 
Dying." 






1653. 


Walton's "Complete An- 


1653. 


Cromwell becomes Lord High 




gler." 




Protector. 


1656. 


Fuller's "Church History." 






1658. 


Dryden's "Stanzas on the 
Death of Cromwell." 


1658. 


Death of Oliver Cromwell. 


1659. 


Moliere's " Lps Pr^cieuses 
Bidicules." 






1660. 


Dryden's " Astraea Redux." 
Pepys's Diary begun (ends 


1660. 


Restoration of Charles II. 









42 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 





IDDi- 


-10/ u 




American History 


American Literature 


1661. 


All Quakers in prison re- 
leased at Charles II's orders. 










1662. 


Michael Wigglesworth's 
"Day of Doom." 


1663. 


North Carolina settled. 


1663. 


John Eliot's Indian Bible. 


1664. 


New Amsterdam captured 
by the English, and becomes 
New York. 






1665. 


New Jersey settled. 










1666. 


John Eliot's Indian Gram- 
mar. 


1669. 


South Carolina settled. 







1671-1680 













1673. 


Samuel Sewall's 
begun. 


Diary 


1675. 


King Philip's 


War. 










1676. 


Bacon's 


rebellion 


in Vir- 


1676. 


Roger Williams's 


' George 




gmia. 










Fox digged out of his Bur- 














rows." 














1678. 


Later poems of Anne Brad- 














street. 





1681-1690 



1681. First printing press in Vir- 
ginia. 

1682. Philadelphia founded by 
William Penn. 

Delaware settled. 
La Salle sails down the Mis- 
sissippi. 

1684. Colonial charter of Massa- 
chusetts declared void. 

1686. Sir Edmund Andros becomes 
royal governor of New Eng- 
land. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



43 



1661-1670 



English and European Literature 



English and European History 



1663. Butler's "Hudibras." 



1667. Milton's "Paradise Lost." 
Dryden's "Annus Mirabilis.' 



1665. Plague in London. 

1666. Great Fire in London. 



1671-1680 



1671. Milton's "Samson" and 
" Paradise Regained." 

1672. Boileau's "Art of Poetry." 

1673. Moliere died. 

1674. Death of Milton. 
Death of Herrick. 
Eacine's " Iphig^nie." 

1677. Racine's ''Phedre." 

1678. " Pilgrim's Progress," Part I. 
George Fox's "A New Eng- 
land Firebrand." 
Dryden's "All for Love " (a 
rhymed version of Shake- 
speare's "Antony and Cleo- 
patra"). 



1679. The Habeas Corpus Act. 



1681-1690 



1681. Death of Calderon. 
Dryden's "Absalom." 

1682. Otway's "Venice 
served." 



Pre- 



1684. "Pilgrim's Progress," Part 
Death of Corneille. 



1682. Accession of Peter the Great 
and Ivan. (Peter alone after 
1696.) 

1683. Executions of Russell and 
Sidney. 



1685. Accession of James U. 

Rebellion and death of Mon- 
mouth. 



44 



THE AGE OF DEPEN^DENCE 



1681-1690 — Continued 



American History 



1689. King William's (Indian) 
War. 

Andros deposed and im- 
prisoned. 



American Literature 



1687. William Penn's "Excellent 
Privilege of Liberty and 
Property." 

1689. Cotton Mather's " Memora- 
ble Providences Relating to 
Witchcraft and Possessions." 

1690. "Public Occurrences," first 
newspaper in New Eng- 
land. 



1691-1700 



1692. Annexation of Plymouth to 
Massachusetts. Royal char- 
ter. 

Prosecutions for witchcraft 
in Salem, Mass. 
Charter of William and Mary 
College, Va. 



1691. Increase Mather's "The 
Revolution in New England 
Justified." 

Cotton Mather's " Heresies, 
Blasphemies, and Delusions 
of Quakerism." 
The New England Primer. 

1692. Increase Mather's "A Fur- 
ther Account of New Eng- 
land Witches." 



1693. Cotton Mather's "Wonders 
of the Invisible World." 

1694. Cotton Mather's " Short His- 
tory of New England." 

1697. Samuel Sewall's " Phae- 

nomena Quaedam Apoca- 

lyptica." 
1700. Samuel Sewall's " Selling of 

Joseph." (First antisla very 

tract.) 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



45 



1681-1690 — Continued 



Englisli and European Literature 



English and European History 



1687. Newton's **Principia." 

Dryden's "The Hind and the 

Panther." 

Prior, "Country Mouse and 

City Mouse." 



1690. Locke's "Essay Concerning 
the Human Understanding." 



1685. Edict of Nantes revoked. 

700,000 Huguenots driven out 
of France. 



1689. Accession of William and 
Mary. 

1690. Battle of 



the Boyne. 



1691-1700 



1693. Locke on Education. 



1696. Tate and Brady's Psalms. 

1697. Dryden's " Virgil's .^neid." 
1700. Death of Dryden. 



1694. Bank of England created. 
Death of Queen Mary. 



CHAPTER III 

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

EVEN in England, there is little, indeed, of purely 
imaginative and poetic creation, between Mil- 
ton's death and the appearance of Wordsworth's and 
Coleridge's " Lyrical Ballads " in 1798. We need 
not be lost in wonder, then, that little or no litera- 
ture was created by a small, scattered English folk 
during the long, heroic struggle, first with the French 
and Indians, then with their own kin, the future 
" masters of the seven seas " : a struggle for firm and 
free foothold upon a continent still unexplored and 
semihostile. Indeed, the second century of our his- 
tory is more unpoetic even than the first, and our 
real national literature, if literature is indeed one of 
the fine arts, hardly begins until 1821, — just two 
hundred years after that first coy spring dawned 
upon the decimated but unbroken pioneers of Plym- 
outh. But the eighteenth century is of course 
epochal in the story of our people, and of human 
progress toward civic and religious freedom. 

I. Cotton Mather 

Like a stranded leviathan across our path lies the 
" Magnalia Christi Americana," or ecclesiastical his- 
tory of New England. This is an attempt to prove 
that the constant occurrence of miracles has attended 

46 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 47 

and guided the development of the Hebraic and 
Puritan commonwealth in America. On those who "Magnalia," 
neglect church worship altogether, and quite as much ^^^" 
upon Baptists, Quakers, and all the other pestilent 
schismatics, signal judgments of Heaven fall, in 
Mather's chronicle, thicker than angry Apollo's 
arrows in the " Iliad." The display of Latin, Greek, 
and Hebrew, the world-wide allusions and digres- 
sions, prove the precocious and pedantic learning of 
the tireless young author, who lived to produce over 
three hundred and eighty separate works. His style 
is simply unendurable. As Professor Tyler well 
says, " His most common thought had to force its 
way into utterance through dense hedges and jungles 
of quotations." Though Mather calls Aristotle a 
"muddy-headed pagan," and Herodotus a "merce- 
nary villain," he himself ill deserves even the hum- 
blest place among historians or philosophers. He 
can hardly even be called a seeker for Truth, since 
his personal vanity, his partisan zeal, or his theologi- 
cal intolerance would always close his eyes to her. 

The unwieldy form of the " Magnalia " can serve 
here only as a warning, once impressive, but now fast 
passing to oblivion. Indeed, Cotton Mather's name 
is important largely as a reminder how entirely the 
political " dynasty " of reverend Mathers, and of the 
clergy generally, has fallen. Cotton Mather suc- 
ceeded his father. Increase, only as preacher. The increase 
presidency of Harvard College he never attained, and ^^3^1^33 
the political sway of the clergy was even then visibly 
waning. The deposition of Increase Mather from 
the college presidency, in 1701, marks the turn of 
the tide. In 1689 the new charter of Massachu- 



48 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

setts had given full political rights to property 
holders, whether church members or not. The com- 
mon perils of the eighteenth century taught nearly 
all Americans to welcome a brotherhood far wider 
than any one theologic creed, or than any one colo- 
nial border line. Both Mathers, before they died, 
saw and condemned the first signs of the new time. 

II. Jonathan Edwards 

Tonathan Edwards, though the most noted preacher of his 

{m^vm ^^y^ apparently never attempted to exert any influ- 
ence upon the political life of his times. He filled 
the positions of tutor in Yale College, of minister to 
the Congregational Church in Northampton from 1727 
until his deposition in 1750, and of missionary to an 
Indian tribe, 1751-1758. A few weeks before his 
death he had undertaken the presidency of Princeton 
College. 

His permanent fame is as a theologian and meta- 
physician. He had perhaps the most acute and pre- 
cocious mind ever known in America. Born of the 
best Puritan stock, the only son of an able and culti- 
vated clergyman, he made astonishing progress and 
many far-reaching discoveries, in various physical 
sciences. A paper on the habits of spiders, written 
in his twelfth year, is worthy of an Agassiz. In 
mathematics and languages he was no less proficient. 
All his life he was an unwearying student, averaging 
thirteen hours of hard work in each twenty-four. He 
had an extremely keen wit and a mercilessly vivid 
imagination. In a favorable environment he might 
have been a great creative writer, of serene and opti- 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 49 

mistic temper, ministering richly to human happiness 
and interpreting afresh the beauty of life. 

Instead, all his mighty powers of voice and pen 
were devoted, after a brief and pathetic struggle, to 
setting forth the utter depravity of the human will, 
the righteous wrath of the Creator, the tortures of a 
hell that yawns for nearly the entire human race. 
This life is to him only a most brief and painful trial 
of the soul, after which there can be no appeal from 
an eternal sentence. All enjoyment is unspeakably 
dangerous, because it diverts man from the one im- 
portant task, the saving of his lost, his hundred-fold 
forfeited soul. 

The splendid natural capacity of Edwards, his 
lifelong ascetic devotion to his duty as he con- 
ceived it, the lurid terrors of his sermons, over which 
men still shudder, — all this makes him a most in- 
structive figure in his century. To such men belles 
lettres were, of course, a snare of Satan. And yet 
Edwards himself is often witty, picturesque, even 
graceful, always clear, direct, and logical. Some of his 
sentences on Idealism, for instance, might easily be in- 
serted in Emerson's essay on the "Transcendentalist." 
" The universe . . . exists nowhere but in the Divine 
mind. . . . Spirits only are properly substance. All 
material existence is only idea." Indeed, of the two 
philosophers, Edwards and Emerson, Edwards living 
in the same generation might well have been the 
greater, even in pure literature, through the con- 
structive and logical powers of his tireless mind. 
With all his saintliness, devotion, and heroic charac- 
ter, his life must seem to us now largely a pathetic 
waste of energy ; yet " Edwards on the Will " is one 



50 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

of the great landmarks of psychological and theolog- 
ical speculation, and some wise men still speak of 
this modest provincial recluse as the mightiest intel- 
lect of his generation. 

III. Benjamin Franklin 

Benjamin Every great man bears the impress of his time ; 

17(^17^^* ^^^ ^^^^ ^®^^ ^^^ ^^^ stamp in turn upon that age, 
or the next. Perhaps of no man who lived in the 
eighteenth century is this truer than of Franklin. 
Though not, in England, an age of great creative 
literature, it was an epoch of swift emancipation for 
the human mind. Pope and Bolingbroke at its begin- 
ning prove themselves of the same century as Thomas 
Paine and Benjamin Franklin, Rousseau and Voltaire. 
England had recovered from the riotous levity of 
the Stuart Restoration, but never resumed the broken 
yoke of Puritanism. The rights of man were pro- 
claimed louder than aught else. In particular, the 
right to enjoy this life is insisted on more strenuously 
than any casual hope of being elsewhere blest. 

Puritanism had been more fully intrenched in the 
new England than in the old. Yet the narrow fa- 
naticism of the founders could not abide unaltered. 
We have seen the embittered and disappointed 
Mathers denouncing the growing liberalism of 
Church and State. The fall of Edwards was more 
striking, especially as he had led in that famous 
revival of religious excitement called the " Great 
Awakening." He too was despondent over the uni- 
versal "laxity." It was true that even the granitic 
nature of hereditary Puritanism was being slowly 



national 
life. 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 51 

infiltrated and softened by the showers and sunshine 
of a less austere time. 

But the walls of Zion had been builded quite too 
narrow for the great republic that should be. The 
Baptist in Rhode Island, the Quaker in Pennsyl- 
vania, could hardly borrow, if they would, the intol- 
erance of their persecutors. English, Irish, Scotch, 
Huguenots, Dutch, Germans, Swedes, and men of 
still other races, were comrades in the two great 
struggles, — against France and later against the Elements of 
mother country herself, — and often were interlocked 
also by marriage ties. As the Frenchman Crevecceur 
so well says, even in his idyllic picture of life before 
the Revolution, " Here individuals of all nations are 
melted into a new race of men, whose labors and pos- 
terity will one day cause great changes in the world." 
Steadily men's thoughts turned more and more to a 
federated continental state. 

In this molding of a new race and nation the 
part of Franklin is at least as large as any man's. It 
was as a whole a race apter for action than for dream- 
ing. His welcome gifts to it include stoves, light- 
ning rods, police, a postal system, fire companies, as 
well as foreign alliances, the first libraries and mag- 
azines, a university, — and a noble model of simple, 
picturesque Saxon style. 

" Otherworldliness " never really died out, least of 
all in the true " Brahmin stock," as Dr. Holmes calls 
it, of the cultivated Puritans. Transcendentalism 
teaches, no less strenuously than Calvinism, that the 
visible tangible world is unreal, or at least unknow- 
able, that only ideas are truly alive, that the universe 
itself exists only in the divine mind. But between 



52 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

Edwards and Emerson there was an epoch of extremely 
practical and materialistic tendencies. The type of 
Yankee, of American, then developed, is still familiar, 
if not dominant, at home, and the only one generally 
accepted abroad. Kipling's " American " is offensively 
realistic. Shrewd, thrifty, tireless, masterful among 
his rivals, though half-contemptuously generous to 
helpless men, he enjoys the goods of this life in his 
own busy, hurrying fashion, and worries himself little 
as to things invisible and metaphysical. And to this 
day " success in life " is preached as a duty largely 
in the very words of "Poor Richard," and is best 
illustrated by the career of the humble printer's 
apprentice who at last, wealthy, learned, of world- 
wide fame, 

"Wrested the lightning from the sky and the scepter from 
tyrants." 

Some of our debts to Franklin we can only realize 
when we know our poverty before. The town of 
Boston from which he fled at seventeen had less 
than twenty thousand inhabitants, no library save in 
private houses, no bookstore, no newspaper worthy 
of the name, though the boy Franklin had already 
made notable progress in creating one. Philadel- 
phia and New York were even smaller and less intel- 
lectual. Indeed, the former city undoubtedly owed 
much of its swift growth later in the century to this 
runaway Yankee. 

In Philadelphia, Franklin persuaded a circle of 
young men to form a debating club, then to bring 
each his few books into a common store ; and, finally, 
when this plan failed, he induced a larger circle to 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 53 

subscribe a small sum yearly. This example, widely 
imitated, created the "subscription" libraries, and 
made us a nation of readers, as Franklin quietly 
claims, in his time. 

Yet nearly all books worthy of the name had still 
to be imported. For twenty-five years (1733-1758) 
Poor Richard's Almanac was, for thousands of homes, 
the only thing approaching to literature that entered 
in. Though tinged with the light wit and easy grace 
of the Spectator^ yet the brief introductions, anec- 
dotes, maxims, bits of verse, here strewn with so 
ready a hand, contain little of creative or artistic 
value. Often the writer is rather coarse. In par- 
ticular, Franklin had little or no chivalric feeling 
toward women, and a lower moral tone in his rela- 
tions with them than in any other dealings. Per- 
haps he was also too frank, fearless, and self-satisfied 
to pretend to a higher virtue than he practiced. 

The chief lesson, however, of Poor Richard is 
thrift. This was fully illustrated in the famous 
address of " Father Abraham," which in the closing 
number skillfully and wittily summed up the maxims 
and bits of advice already invented, or gathered from 
all sources, and uttered during the previous quarter- 
century. That " 'tis hard for an empty bag to stand 
upright " is the keynote, reiterated almost like lago's 
" Put money in thy purse." 

Franklin's " Autobiography " is one of the favor- 
ite books of mankind. Though written chiefly in 
old age, and not published until long after his death, 
it covers only his life down to 1757. The forcible, 
sententious style, the quiet humor, the very human 
self-satisfaction of Franklin, give these pages an 



64 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

unfailing charm. The little book has great value as 
a truthful picture of our crude social conditions. 
But its world-wide popularity is due rather to the 
complete delineation of one sturdy, happy character, 
of one typical life. 

All Franklin's writings are vigorous, witty, health- 
ful in their very sincerity, and instructive. They 
belong chiefly to our political history, or to science, 
though Mr. Bigelow, who rescued the simpler, genuine 
text of the biography from oblivion, has earned our 
double gratitude by weaving the philosopher's let- 
ters also into a complete self -told life. Perhaps the 
first place, as literature, among Franklin's lesser 
works, should be given to three satirical essays : 
"Rules for Reducing a Great Empire to a Small 
One," "An Edict of the King of Prussia" (both 
1773), and the pretended letter of instructions to the 
Hessian commander in America (1777). Especially, 
the notion that the claims asserted over us by George 
III for the " mother country " could be turned upon 
England herself, by the yet more imperious tyrant 
Frederick, in the name of the elder German Vater- 
land, was a master stroke of satiric genius. Printed 
casually in a London newspaper, it made a great hit 
even in a hostile England. 

Franklin spent so many of his latter years in Eng- 
land and France, educating European opinion con- 
cerning us, that he seems to have come home barely 
often and remained long enough to sign the great 
Declaration and the Constitution. But foi' the alli- 
ances, loans, supplies, and finally fleets and armies, 
won for us by Franklin's diplomacy, Washington 
would almost certainly have failed at last. This 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 55 

foreign residence, too, was a great service to Ameri- 
can letters and higher life generally. Through him 
our nation was known and respected all over Europe, 
even before independence was actually won. 

Franklin was anything but saintly. Idealism is 
almost lacking in him. Even his religion is little 
more than an enlightened selfishness, founded on a 
moral code so vulnerable that his list of rules for vir- 
tuous behavior is never reprinted entire. Yet the 
parallel between him and Socrates is not wholly fanci- 
ful. The likeness goes much deeper than that homely 
style, quaint, witty illustration, and mock humility 
in discussion, which the modern philosopher learned 
largely from the ancient. Franklin is actually, thus 
far, for good and ill, the chief ethical teacher and 
molder of our race. The flight of the poor appren- 
tice from Boston really typifies the breaking forth of 
a sturdy young nation from the outgrown shell of 
Puritanism. His public life is one of the chief 
chapters in our national history, and so could hardly 
be touched upon here. 

IV. Reyolutiokary Literature 

The struggle for independence is often said to 
have opened with James Otis's fearless protest, in James Otis, 
1761, against the writs of assistance, that is, against 
the right of royal officers to invade private houses bj^ 
summary violence. Even in the brief notes pre- 
served by the youthful John Adams, who was pres- John 
ent, we hear the ringing warning, that such acts 
have " cost one king of England his head, and 
another his throne." But the eloquence of Otis, 



1725-1783. 



Adams, 
1735-1826. 



56 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



Samuel 

Adams, 

1722-1803. 

Patrick 

Henry, 

1736-1799. 



Thomas 

Paine, 

1737-1809. 



Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, and their associates, is 
now little more than a tradition. Indeed, oratory is 
largely dependent on the occasion and the setting, 
and so is, at best, very imperfectly preserved in the 
written letter ; and for our own Revolutionary elo- 
quence we rarely have even that record. 

The power of the newspaper increased greatly 
during the years before the final appeal to arms. 
But the magazine of our day did not exist. Instead, 
pamphlets were issued singly, and often exerted a 
decisive influence. It is interesting to note that the 
electric word which suddenly ended the persistent 
talk of loyalty to England, and proclaimed full inde- 
pendence as the goal of all patriots, was uttered by 
an erratic alien. " Tom " Paine, then, at forty years, 
a needy, obscure adventurer, sent over by Franklin 
with letters of introduction, had not been two years 
in America when he issued, January 1, 1776, the 
pamphlet " Common Sense." Universally read in 
camp and cottage, its coarse vigor had universal and 
decisive effect. Again, in the darkest days of 
war, Paine's irregular periodical called the Crisis 
brought comfort to every patriot soldier from Wash- 
ington down, and still lives in its first words, 
" These are the times that try men's souls." 

Paine's later entanglement with the French revolu- 
tionists may remind us how closely connected, yet 
how diverse, were the two great upheavals. In both 
cases the instinct of the radical agitator led Paine 
with unerring promptness to the scene. In America 
he won honor, wide audience, general gratitude. In 
Paris he escaped the guillotine only by a providential 
accident. 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 57 

The most widely read and influential essay that 
ever was written, perhaps, came from the pen of 
Thomas Jefferson in the summer of 1776. The Thomas 
" Declaration of Independence " was indeed warmly l^f^i^^ 
debated, criticized, and pruned, in committee and in 
general debate. It was issued as the manifesto of a 
young nation. Yet it is an essay of Jefferson's, as 
well. Its ringing assertions of human freedom and 
equality came rather strangely from an owner of 
slaves, yet many men believe that those very phrases, 
vibrating through three generations, the most famil- 
iar of household words, made emancipation neces- 
sary at last. Indeed, their clear tones have by no 
means died away, and may yet lead other generations 
to higher ideals of liberty. " New occasions teach 
new duties," but the old watchwords keep their 
power. 

Among the first and severest critics of the famous 
Declaration was Governor Hutchinson, the historian Thomas 
of Massachusetts, then already living in England. ^ii!i7^°^ 
The outrageous sacking of his house and destruction 
of his papers by a Boston mob had added a burning 
sense of personal injury to the ordinary bitterness of 
civil war. The example of Hutchinson may serve to 
remind us how severe were the losses to our literature, 
and culture generally, through the vindictive persecu- 
tion and lasting exile of the " Tories," many thou- 
sands of whom were permanently expelled after the 
strife was over, when the brains and hands of all 
would have been helpful to the young nation. 

The able essays of the Federalist^ supporting and 
elucidating the new Constitution, are almost as dis- 
tinct from general literature as is a technical law book 



58 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



Alexander 

Hamilton, 

1757-1804. 

James 

Madison, 

1751-1836. 

John Jay, 

1745-1829. 



George 
Washing- 
ton, 
1732-1799. 



or learned treatise of any sort. Their value lies almost 
wholly in their matter ; the only charm of style 
demanded for them is clearness in exposition. Yet 
these eighty-five essays of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay 
show most adequately the dignity, statesmanship, and 
philosophic wisdom of the Federalist leaders, who 
then succeeded in establishing a strong and lasting 
central authority in the stead of thirteen scattered, 
distracted, and jealous state governments. Indeed, 
Hamilton's untiring pen and his resistless eloquence, 
in the very same days, in the debates of tlie New York 
Convention, may well have saved the young Constitu- 
tion itself. 

Perhaps, however, the literature of the Revolu- 
tionary epoch may be said to close rather with Wash- 
ington's "Farewell Address" (1796). In this the 
wisdom and courage of our heroic leader in war and 
peace find worthy expression. Its calm dignity 
breathes the very spirit of hhe man. It is a far cry 
indeed from the " Magnalia " to this utterance of the 
same century. We feel, as in the case of Jefferson, 
a certain reverence for the ancient regime itself, that 
had bred in the old dominion such natural leaders of 
men. We almost wonder that Jefferson should have 
hastened home from the first continental congress to 
introduce in Virginia the democratic political condi- 
tions whose results he had seen in Massachusetts. 

Yet even Washington's best sentences, compared 
with, e.g.^ such a highly artistic and beautiful utter- 
ance as Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, seem stilted, 
cold, almost prosy. They become literature, if at all, 
largely because of the weight of character behind 
them, and from the dramatic conditions of the hour. 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 59 

This may perhaps be said no less of almost any- 
American utterance throughout those heroic years. 
The elder Adams's diary is important among the 
historian's "sources." Jefferson's autobiography • 
deserves to be generally read, and the lack of any 
such frank self-utterance from Washington is to be 
deeply regretted. But Franklin, alone, has left a life 
history which is also a masterpiece of literature. 

V. Addenda 

Two works of this period may require brief 
separate mention, though neither author was exactly 
an American. John Woolman's " Journal " was john 
published after his death, at fifty-two, in 1772. This Y7^m2' 
meek and fearless English Quaker seems quite una- 
ware how heroic his life story is. Like that life, the 
book itself is very largely a calm, earnest protest 
against human slavery, particularly in this country. 
Mr. Whittier, in editing it, calls fitting attention to 
the proud and unique record of tlie Friends on this 
question. The quiet methods by which the Quakers 
early purged their own sect of ownership in human 
flesh are quaintly set forth by Woolman. The 
Journal is also precious as the story of an absolutely 
simple, sincere mystic, who heard and obeyed a per- 
sonal call from God to a most dangerous life task. 
To such men as the elder Channing, Charles Lamb, 
Crabb Robinson, and Whittier himself, this simple 
little volume has been a lifelong inspiration. 

Crevecoeur's " Letters of an American Farmer " saint-John 
has been quoted already. The real author was a deCreve- 
French immigrant, an open-eyed student of nature 1731-1813. 



60 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

and human life. His account of our early self-taught 
botanist, John Bartram, is excellent. The story of 
the poor Hebridean laborer, who in America soon 
becomes a prosperous farmer, is largely typical, and 
was clearly so intended. The sketch of slavery is 
terribly vivid, while happy Nantucket is drawn in 
striking contrast. In the last letter the horrors of 
the Revolution have convulsed the peaceful scene, 
and the farmer is about to take refuge — among the 
Indians ! These chapters fail to give the effect of 
genuine letters to a brother Englishman, but they do 
make a naive, humane, enjoyable, and instructive 
book, which should by all means be reprinted. 
Indeed, the entire absence of such works as Paine's, 
Crevecceur's, and Beverley's from our libraries and 
book markets is a grave blot on our intelligent 
national patriotism. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

For nearly the whole eighteenth century we have still the 
exhaustive works of Professor Tyler. On Mather, see A. P. 
Marvin's "Life and Times of Cotton Mather," Boston, 1892, 
and Barrett Wendell's "Cotton Mather, the Puritan Priest." 
The "Magnalia" was last reprinted, Hartford, 1853. 

Perhaps the most accessible form of Jonathan Edwards's 
works is Bohn's English edition, with portrait. Biography by 
A. V. G. Allen, Boston, 1889. The best essays on him are by 
Dr. Holmes, Vol. VHI of his collected works, and Leslie Ste- 
phen, " Hours in a Library," Series 2, Chap. IL See also a more 
filial view in "Jonathan Edwards, a Memorial," Houghton, 
1901. This volume is made up of addresses on the anniver- 
sary of Edwards's deposition at Northampton. 

Franklin's "Autobiography" alone is published in the handy 
series of " Knickerbocker Nuggets," with brief notes by Bige- 
low. A companion volume, well edited by P. L. Ford, gives 
all of " Poor Richard " which has any literary interest. The 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 61 

larger autobiography, completed from Frankliii's letters, is also 
edited by Mr. Bigelow, Philadelphia, 1875, and he, too, is the 
editor of the " Works," in ten volumes. New York, 1887-1888. 
Lives of Franklin are included in the well-known series of 
" American Statesmen " and " American Men of Letters," and 
more recent biographies by Ford and Fisher are widely read. 
Franklin's own account is still the best. 

For Crevecoeur we can refer at present only to extracts and 
discussions in Tyler, "Literary History of the Revolution," Vol. 
II, pp. 347-358, and Stedman's Library, Vol. Ill, pp. 138-146. 

Woolman's " Journal " has been often reprinted. Whittier's 
edition, Boston, 1871, is the best. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY 

Franklin's " Autobiography " should be in every school library. 
His first journey from Boston to Philadelphia can be effectively 
compared with present conditions. So may the general social 
life in both cities, and, in particular, the publishing trade. His 
project for a universal creed and church, and his personal rela- 
tions with the clergy, indeed, almost any side of his life, may 
be profitably discussed. American humor begins with him, 
unless we go back to the Cobbler of Agawam. 

It is unfortunate that Crevecoeur's book is not equally 
accessible. 

Any special treatment of Edwards should include his happy 
early utterances, such as his paper on spiders and his rhapsody 
upon the future Mrs. Edwards. Mature students, and they alone, 
should study at least his most famous sermon, " Sinners in the 
Hands of an Angry God," if only as a masterpiece of terribly 
realistic imagination. 



CHAPTER IV 
BEGINNINGS OF ROMANCE AND POETRY 

THE heroic struggle for freedom called the Ameri* 
can Revolution was, after all, a civil war. It 
gave a lasting stimulus to our political energy and 
oratory, but to little else. Its long resulting hatred 
cut us off in large degree from our nearest kin and 
natural allies. The expulsion of the Tories weak- 
ened the young nation still more. Provincial jeal- 
ousies, and real diversity in social or political ideals, 
divided the long thin line of little seaboard states. 
True national feeling was of slow growth. Luxury, 
or even leisure, was hardly known. The unwearying 
westward march to the conquest of a continent was 
but just begun. The revolution to be wrought by 
steam and electricity was as yet not dreamed of. It 
was still a time of humble and painful beginnings. 
A national literature was at best a far-away dream 
of the few, in a workaday world. 

One real minor poet did appear for a moment in the 
Philip very years of the Revolution. Philip Freneau pub- 

n5^i832 lished verses when a boy in college. His " British 
Prison Ship " and many other fierce utterances have 
a place in the records of the war. Of the patriots 
who perished at Eutaw Springs he sang clearly and 
heroically : — 

" They saw their injured country's woe, 
The flaming town, the wasted field, 
62 



BEGINNINGS OF ROMANCE AND POETRY 63 

Then rushed to meet the insulting foe ; 
They took the spear — but left the shield." 

Walter Scott expressed his admiration for Freneau 
both directly, and also by borrowing this last verse, 
which may be seen gleaming intact on a page of " Mar- 
mion." Curiously enough, Campbell, in " O'Connor's 
Child," has paid the same compliment to the closing 
verse in a quatrain from the " Indian Burying 
Ground " : — 

" The hunter still the deer pursues, 
The hunter and the deer, a shade." 

Both were nuggets of pure gold, well worth the 
lifting. " To a Honeybee " and " The Wild Honey- 
suckle," also, are not unworthy of Herrick's happiest 
vein. But political strife filled most of Freneau's 
career as an author, which closed altogether with the 
eighteenth century. 

Patriotism should surely carry us all through the 
pages in Mr. Stedman's " Library " (Vol. Ill, 389- 
361), devoted to the anonymous lyrics of war time, 
beginning with " Yankee Doodle " and ending with 
" Bold Hathorne " — ancestor, by the way, of our 
greatest romancer. 

The chief poem of the revolutionary decade is 
perhaps Trumbull's " M'Fingal " (composed 1774- John 
1782), which satirizes in Hudibrastic verse the de- 
tested "Tory." It certainly has a rough vigor and 
pungent humor. When the tar is applied to the 
poor wretch, we are assured that 

" With less profusion once was spread 
Oil on the Jewish monarch's head, 
That down his beard and vestments ran, 
And covered all his outward man." 



Trumbull, 
1750-1831. 



64 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

The Scriptural allusion is a true Puritanic touch. 
We cannot deny the musical and whimsical grace 
wherewith 

" From nose and chin's remotest end 
The tarry icicles descend." 

The feather-bag, presently produced, brings with 
it mocking allusions to Mercury's winged cap, and 
to Plato's definition of man as a featherless biped. 
This is not, indeed, poetry in any high sense ; but 
classic culture, wit, and ease in turning verses are 
at least fresh and encouraging signs for the coming 
time. 
Joel Barlow, Far more pretentious is the utterance of Joel 
176^1812. x:;arlow. His "Vision of Columbus" (1787) as 
enlarged to the '' Columbiad " (1807) became an 
epic of seven thousand reverberating lines. In plan 
it challenges comparison with the sixth book of the 
"-^neid, " where Anchises shows his son the long 
array of future Romans. Even so the Genoese 
mariner beholds 

" Macdougal, Clinton, guardians of the state, 
Stretch the nerved arm to pierce the depth of fate," 
or 

"Moultrie and Sumpter lead their banded powers." 

Yet an ungrateful later age not only refuses to read 
" Virgilian Barlow's tuneful lines," 

but will not even reprint them ! His " Hasty Pud- 
ding," lightened with copious woodcuts, reappears 
in an old Harper 8 Magazine (1856), but no poetic 
verse is quotable. Even the humor is heavy and 
lumbering. The best couplet is, perhaps : — 



BEGINNINGS OF ROMANCE AND POETRY 65 

" E'en in thy native regions how I blush 
To hear the Pennsylvanians call thee Mush!'* 

The life of Barlow, a valorous, if bewildered, paladin 
of democracy, is much more interesting than his 
verse. 

As to the rest of the forgotten group who, with 
Trumbull and Barlow, made up, about the turning of 
the century, the circle of " Hartford wits," we must 
again refer to Mr. Stedman. The central figure 
among them is perhaps the great president of Yale, 
Timothy D wight. That he whose " Theology ex- Timothy 
plained and defended in 173 Sermons " has passed ^^.^igiT- 
through one hundred and twenty editions should 
have descended to verse at all, even to satirize with 
stanch conservatism " The Triumph of Infidelity," 
i.e. the grooving liberalism of the extreme East, is 
in itself remarkable. Long before, when a young 
chaplain in the Continental army, he had sung, 
" Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise." 

Charles Brockden Brown is said to have been the Charles 
first man in America who made letters his profession bJ^^q ^" 
and livelihood. He is also our first romancer. His 1781-1810. 
short life was, like Louis Stevenson's, an unceasing 
struggle with illness. He had "never been free 
from pain," he wrote when near his end, "a half- 
hour at a time." He was always a diligent, om- 
nivorous student, a man of high professional ideals, 
and presumably of blameless character. He died in 
the midst of the last among several brave attempts 
to establish a literary periodical in New York or 
Philadelphia. 

These all seem to be valid claims upon our respect- 



6Q THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

ful interest. Curiously enough, too, Brown an- 
nounces himself as a reformer and realist in fiction, 
and ridicules the " Gothic castles " and gloomy mys- 
teries of earlier romance. But his six long stories, all 
hastily written and published between 1798 and 1801, 
• ill deserve the rich vellum and luxurious type in 
which they still appear. Instead of the fresh vigor 
and joy of youth, we have here a stale copy after a 
morbid and grewsome school of English decadents. 
Godwin's grewsome " Caleb Williams " is Brown's 
ideal of unapproachable excellence. Brown's own 
hazy characters, loosely strung plots, lurid horrors in 
incident, and occasional brutal coarseness, above all his 
verbose, grandiloquent style, make his books unread- 
able, and utterly unprofitable if read. His scenery 
is American; a few passages like the description of 
lawlessness during the plague of yellow fever show 
close realistic detail ; Constantia Dudley purchasing 
corn meal at "80 cents a bushel, and supporting her 
family for three mouths on polenta at a cost of $2. 75, is 
a curious link of connection with the " Hasty Pud- 
Richard ding" of " Virgilian Barlow," as Alsop, a yet obscurer 
^61-1815 ^^^ ^^ letters, fondly called his epic friend. But 
Brown is really powerful only in exciting an uncanny 
sense of aimless horror. In short, he is, as Professor 
Wendell says, a striking reminder that our literature 
never had any happy youthtime. Brown knew a 
bad tradition in English romance too well, and real 
life, or the Vicar of Wakefield, it would seem, hardly 
at all. We turn eagerly away to a sunnier nature 
and a happier life. 



BEGINNINGS OF ROMANCE AND POETRY 67 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Most of the books mentioned in this section are out of print, 
and a general reference to the Stedman's Library must suffice. 
See also Tyler, and the remarkable sketch of America in 1800 
which opens Henry Adams's history of America. 

We might mention here such romances, depicting the Revo- 
lutionary period, as Mrs. Child's " Rebels," Miss Sedgwick's 
" Linwood," Kennedy's " Horseshoe Robinson," Cooper's " Pi- 
lot " and " Spy," Simms's " Partisan," and Dr. Mitchell's " Hugh 
Wynne." 

Freneau's Revolutionary poems were last printed in America 
in 1865, edited by Duyckinck, New York. An exhaustive life 
by Mary S. Austin has just appeared (A. Wessels & Co.). See 
Eggleston's American War Ballads and Lyrics. 

Trumbull's " M'Fingal " was edited, with notes, etc., by B. J. 
Lossing, New York, 1880. 

Barlow's " Hasty Pudding " is cited entire by Stedman. 

The " Columbiad " is out of print. Original edition, Phila- 
delphia, 1807. For both Dwight and Barlow, see in general 
Professor Tyler's " Three Men of Letters," New York, 1895. 

A pathetic proof of our lack of real poetry before Bryant's 
day will be found in his courteous and hopeful essay on con- 
temporary verse, written in 1818. Not one of the poets there 
discussed is now read, or even named. 

For the " Hartford wits " generally, see Sheldon's " The Ple- 
iades of Connecticut," Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XY. 

Brockden Brown's novels, six volumes, Philadelphia, 1857 and 
1887. Biographies by Dunlap, Philadelphia, 1815, and by Pres- 
cott, in Sparks's " Library of American Biography " or Prescott^s 
own Miscellanies. Colonel Higginson has made a much more 
favorable estimate of Brown, in G. R. Carpenter's " American 
Prose." 



68 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES— (1700-1800) 



1700-1710 



American History 


American Literature 


1701. French built a fort at Detroit. 






Foundation of Yale College. 






1701-1714. Queen Anne's War. 


1702. 


Cotton Mather's " .Magnalia 
Christi Americana." 
Increase Mather's '* Icha- 
bod." 




1704. 


April 24, first issue of the 
Boston Neiosleiter. 




1705. 


Robert Beverley's " History 
of Virginia." (Published in 










London.) 



1711-1720 



1714. Cotton Mather's "Duodecen- 
nium Luctuosum " (i.e. His- 
tory of Indian Wars 1702- 
3714). 

1716. Thomas Church's "Enter- 
taining Passages relating to 
Philip's War." 



1721-1730 



1730. Printing press in Charleston. 



1721. 



1722. 



James Franklin publishes 
the New England Courant. 
Benjamin Franklin (set. 16) 
contributes to his brother's 
paper. 

1723. Death of Increase Mather. 

1725. New York Gazette, first 
newspaper in New York. 

1728. Death of Cotton Mather. 

1729. Franklin's "Essay on Paper 
Currency." 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



69 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES — (1700-1800) 



1700-1710 



English and European Literature 



Englisli and European History 



1701. Steele's " Christian Hero." 



1704. Sir Isaac Newton's " Optics. 



1709. Copyright Act. 

Courant, first daily news- 
paper. 

1709-1711. Steele and Addison issue 
The Tatler. 

1709. Pope's Pastorals. 



1701-1711. Career of Marlborough. 
1701-1714. War of the Spanish Suc- 
cession. 
1702. Accession of Queen Anne. 

1707. Union of Scotland and Eng- 
land as "Great Britain." 



1711-1720 



1711-1712 and 1714. The Spectator. 
1711. Pope's " Essay on Criticism." 
1712-1714. Pope's "Rape of the 
Lock." 

1715. Le Sage's "Gil Bias." 
1715-1720. Pope's "Iliad." 
1719-1720. Defoe's "Robinson Cru- 
soe." 



1714. Accession of George I. 



1720. Failure of the South Sea 
Company. 



1721-1730 



1723. Voltaire's "Henriade." 




172a-1725. Pope's " Odyssey." 




1725-1730. Thomson's " Seasons." 




1726. Swift's "Gulliver." 




1727. Gay's "Beggars' Opera." 


1727. Accession of George IL 


Pope's "Dunciad." 




1729. Law's "Serious Call to a 




Devout and Holy Life." 




Pope's "Dunciad." 





70 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



1731-1740 



American History 


American Literature 


1733. Georgia settled. 


1731. Franklin projected the Phila- 
delphia Library. 

1733-1758. Franklin issues Poor 
Richard's Almanac. 

1734. Jonathan Edwards's "Divine 
Light." 

1735. Franklin's "Essay on Hu- 
man Vanity." 

1736. Thomas Prince's "Chrono- 
logical History of New Eng- 
land." 

Read's Latin Grammar. 
1740. Whitefield's Sermons. 





1741- 


1760 








1741. 


Jonathan Edwards's " Sin- 
ners in the Hands of an 




- 




Angry God." 






1742. 


Edwards's "Concerning the 
Present Revival of Religion 
in New England." 


1743. 


American Philosophical So- 
ciety founded by Franklin. 






1745. 


Capture of Louisburg by 
Pepperell. 










1746. 


Franklin, "On Courtship 
and Marriage." 


1749. 


University of Pennsylvania 
founded by Franklin. 










1750. 


Franklin, " On Thunder 
Gusts." 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



71 



1731-1740 



English and European Literature 



English and European History 



1732. Pope's " Essay on Man." 

1735. Linnseus's "Systema Na- 
turae. 

1736. Butler's " Analogy." 

1737. Shenstone's "Schoolmis- 
tress." 

1738. Johnson's ** London." 

1739. Hume's " Treatise on Human 
Nature." 



1740. Richardson's *' Pamela. 



1741-1750 



1741-1742. Hume's "Essays." 
1742-1745. Young's "Night 

Thoughts." 
1744. Akenside's "Pleasures of 

the Imagination." 



1746. Collins's " Odes." 

1747. Gray, " On Distant Prospect 
of Eton." 

Prospectus of Johnson's 

Dictionary. 

Klopstock's "Messiah." 

1748. Richardson's "Clarissa 
Harlowe." 

Thomson's " Castle of Indo- 
lence." 

Smollett's " Roderick Ran- 
dom." 

1749. Fielding's " Tom Jones." 



Johnson's "Vanity of Hu- 
man Wishes." 

1749-1756. Swedenborg's " Arcana 
Coelestia." 

1750-1752. Johnson's Rambler. 

1750-1753. Voltaire at the Court 
of Frederick the Great. 



1741 . Coronation of Maria Theresa. 



1745. Last Jacobite Rebellion. 

"Young Pretender" in 
England. 



72 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



1751-1760 



AmoTioan Historj 


American Literature 






1751. 


John Bartram, "On Ameri- 
can Plants." 


1752. 


First dramatic performances 
in America. 






1753. 


Nassau Street Theater, N.Y., 


1753. 


John Woolman, " On the 




opened. 




Keeping of Negroes." 
Franklin's " Plan for Union 


1754. 


(King's) Columbia College 


1754. 




founded. 




of the Colonies." 

Washington's "Journal of 

an Expedition to the Ohio 

River." 

Edwards, " On the Will." 


1755. 


" French and Indian War." 
Defeat of Braddock. 
Deportation of the Arcadian 
villagers. 










1758. 


Edwards, " On Original Sin." 
Franklin's " Father Abra- 
ham's Speech " (in last num- 
ber of Poor Richard's Al- 
manac) . 


1759. 


Death of Wolfe and Mont- 
calm on the Plains of Abra- 
ham. 
Fall of Quebec. 




' 



1761-1770 



1761. Writs of Assistance in Bos- 
ton. 



1763. Conspiracy of Pontiac. 

Mason and Dixon's line es- 
tablished. 



1765-1766. The Stamp Act, 



1761. James Otis's speech against 
the Writs of Assistance. 

1762. Otis's " Vindication of the 
House of Representatives." 



1764. Franklin's "Cool Thoughts 
on the Present Situation." 
Thomas Hutchinson's " His- 
tory of Massachusetts," 
Vol. I. 

Otis's " Rights of the British 
Colonies." 

1767. " Andrew Barton's Disap- 
pointment" (a comic opera) 
performed in New York. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



73 



1751-1760 



English and European Literature 



English and European History 



1751. Gray's " Elegy." 

1753. Richardson's "Sir Charles 

Grandison." 
1754^17(i'i. Hume's "History of 

England." 

1755. Johnson's "Dictionary." 

1756. Burke's "Essay on the 
Sublime." 

1757. Gray's " Odes." 

1758. Johnson's " Idler." 

1759. Johnson's " Rasselas." 
Sterne's "Tristram 
Shandy." 



1756. Englishmen imprisoned in 
the Black Hole of Calcutta. 



1760. Accession of George III. 



1761-1770 



1761. Eousseau's 
tract." 

1762. Macpherson's 
Ossian." 

1764. Goldsmith's " Traveler.' 
Walpole's "Castle 
Otranto." 
Rousseau's " Emile." 

1765. Percy's " Reliques 
Poetry." 
Blackstone's " Commenta- 
ries." 

1766. "Vicar of Wakefield." 
Lessi.ng's " Laocoon." 

1767. Lessing's ' ' Minna von Barn- 
helm.'' 



Social Con- 
" Poems of 

of 

of 



74 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



1761-1770 


— Continued 


American History 


American Literature 


1768. General Gage garrisons Bos- 
ton. 

1770. The Boston Massacre. 


1768. Samuel Adams, " A Circular 
Letter to Colonial Legisla- 
tures." 

1769. Samuel Adams, *' An Appeal 
to the AVorld." 

1770. Joseph Warren's Oration on 
the Boston Massacre. 

John Adams's " Defense of 
the British Soldiers." 



1771-1780 



1773. Tea destroyed in Boston 
harbor. 

1774. First Continental Congress. 

1775. April 19, Battle of Lexington. 
June 17, Bunker Hill. 

1776. Declaration of Independence. 

1777. Articles of Confederation. 
Surrender of Burgoyne. 
Washington winters at Val- 
ley Forge. 

1778. Treaty between France and 
U.S.A. 

1779. Paul Jones's victories with 
Bon Homme Richard. 



1771. Franklin's "Autobiogra- 
phy," Chapters I-V writ- 
ten. (Published 1817.) 

1772. Death of John Woolman. 
(His Journal was first pub- 
lished 1774.) 



1775-1776. The Pennsylvania 

Magazine, edited by Thomas 

Paine. 
1776. Thomas Paine's "Common 

Sense." 

Paine's " Crisis," No. 1. 



1779. 



Ethan Allen' 
Captivity." 



Narrative of 



1781-1790 



1781. 



1782. 



Articles of Confederation 

ratified by the States. 

Surrender of Lord Corn- 

wallis. 

Independence of United 

States recognized. 



1781. 



1782. 



Freneau's 
ship." 



British Prison- 



Crevecoeur (Hector St. John) , 
" Letters from an American 
Farmer." 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



75 



1761-1770 — Continued 



English and European Literature 



English and European History 



1769, Burke's "Present State of 
the Nation," 

1769-1772. Junins's Letters. 

1770. Goldsmith's "Deserted Vil- 



1769. Patents for Watt's steam 
engine and Arkwright's 
spinning frame. 

1770. Lord North prime minister. 



1771- 


1780 


1771. "Encyclopaedia Britan- 




nica," first edition. 




1771-1774. Beattie's "Minstrel." 




1773. Goldsmith's " She Stoops to 
Conquer." 

1774. Goethe's " Werther." 




1774. Boston Port Bill. 


1775. Burke, "On Conciliation 




with America." 




Johnson's " Taxation no 




Tyranny." 




Sheridan's " The Rivals." 




1776. Adam Smith's "Wealth of 




Nations." 




1776-1788. Gibbon's "Decline and 




Fall of the Roman Empire." 




1777. Sheridan's "School for 




Scandal." 




1778. Miss Burney's " Evelina." 




1779-1781. Johnson's "Lives of 




the Poets." 




Lessing's '^Nathan the 




Wise:' 





1781-1790 



1781. Crabbe's Library. 

Kant's " Critique of Pure 
Reason." 

1782. Miss Burney's " Cecilia." 



76 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



1781-1790 — Continued 



American History 


American Literature 








1782. 


Trumbull's " M'Fingal." 
English Bible first printed 
in America. 


1783. 


Treaty of Paris. 




1783. 

1785. 

1786. 


Paine's"Crisis,"lastnumber. 
Timothy Dwight's "Con- 
quest of Canaan." 
Freneau's Poems. 


1787. 


Constitutional Convention. 


1787. 


Joel Barlow's " Vision of Co- 




Shays's Rebellion. 






lumbus" (afterward called 
the "Columbiad "). 


1788. 


Constitution rat if 
eleven states. 


ied by 






1789-1797. Washington's 


Presi- 


1789. 


Franklin's "Autobiogra- 




dency. 






phy," last chapters written. 
Washington's "Inaugural 
Address." 


1790. 


Death of Franklin. 









1791-1800 



1797-1801. John Adams's Presi- 
dency. 

1799. Death of Washington. 



1791. Paine's " Rights of Man." 

1793. Joel Barlow's "Hasty Pud- 
ding" written. (Printed, 
179G.) 

Washington's Second Inau- 
gural. 
1794-m)6. Paine's "Age of Rea- 
son." 

1794. John Adams's "History of 
Republics." 

Dwight's " Greenfield Hill." 
Freneau's "Village Mer- 
chant." 

1795. Lindley Murray's English 
Grammar. 

1796. Washington's Farewell Ad- 
dress. 



1798. Charles Brockden Brown's 
" Wieland." 

1800. Barlow's " Letters from 
Paris." 

Bowditch's " Practical Navi- 
gator." 

Daniel Webster's Foui'th of 
July Speech. 

Greek Testament first printed 
in America. (Worcester, 
Mass.) 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



7T 



17^1-1790 — Continued 



English and European Literature 


English and European History 


1783. Crabbe's " Village." 




1785. Paley 's ' * Moral Philosophy.' ' 




Cowper's " Task." 




Boswell's " Hebrides." 




1786. Burus's Poems iu Scottish 




dialect. 




1787. Goethe's " Iphigenia." 




1788. London Times founded. 




1789. Blake's *' Songs of Inno- 


1789. Storming of the Bastile. 


cence." 




Erasmus Darwin's "Loves 




of the Plants." 




White's "Natural History of 




Selborne." 




1790. Burke's "Reflections on the 


1790. Revolution in France. 


French Revolution." 





1791-1800 



1791. 


Boswell's " Life of Johnson." 










1792. 


Abolition of monarchy in 
France. 






1793. 


Execution of Louis XVI. 
Reign of Terror in France. 


1794. 


Paley' s " Evidences of Chris- 
tianity." 

Godwin's " Political Jus- 
tice." 










1795. 


Final partition of Poland. 


1797. 


Goethe's " Hermann nnd 
Dorothea." 






1798. 


Lyrical ballads of Words- 
worth and Coleridge. 
("Ancient Mariner." "Tin- 
tern Abbey.") 


1798. 


Great Rebellion in Ireland. 






1799. 


Napoleon First Consul. 


1800. 


Schiller's " Wallenstein." 




' 



CHAPTER V 

THE FIRST MASTERS 

I. Washington Irving 

Washington l^ONE of the men we have discussed thus far 
178^1859. belonged to the nineteenth century. All were 

born, all save Brown were of age, when independence 
was won. There is no book published in America 
before 1800 which has now a standing in general 
literature. Our subject, then, is hereafter the litera- 
ture of the nineteenth century. That century may 
be roughly divided into three generations, indicated, 
for instance, by the active career of three such men 
as Cooper, Hawthorne, and Mark Twain. At the 
very threshold stands a most genial figure, emphasiz- 
ing once again the essentially English character of 
our culture. 

The life of Irving shows how easily and naturally 
the true artist, when he comes, finds himself, and 
finds his place in the world. Irving was a happy 
man. He suffered deeply, of course, else he could 
not have known life adequately ; but he had little 
indeed to regret, at the peaceful close of his long 
and illustrious career. 

There is a popular engraving, " Irving and his 
Friends," which assembles about him all the chief 
authors of our first period, down to Lowell, his 
junior by thirty-five years. It illustrates well the 

78 



THE FIRST MASTERS 79 

extreme shortness of our story, that even Colonel 
Higginson, who is to-day still in active service, was 
more than " midway on life's path " when our first 
successful man of letters ended his days at Sunny- 
side. It is most true, too, that all men were Irving's 
friends. 

The father of our first great author had been a 
seafarer, born in the Orkneys, and descended from 
a noble Scottish house. His mother was English, 
and the parents came to New York, soon after their 
marriage, in 1763. The father was a stern, austere 
man, yet he may have transmitted, with Keltic blood, 
the imaginative power with which the youngest of 
his eleven children was richly endowed. A delicate A happy 
lad and youth, indeed threatened repeatedly with ^»y^<^<>^ 
consumption, Washington was evidently the indulged 
favorite of the famil}^ He perused his Bible and 
"Pilgrim's Progress" on Sundays, "Arabian Nights," 
"Gulliver," "Robinson Crusoe," etc., on other days, 
studied comparatively little, but read voraciously. 
He was not, like his sturdier elder brothers, sent to 
Columbia College. 

Leaving school at sixteen, he later was admitted 
to the bar, on very meager legal knowledge, but 
never practiced seriously. He was from childhood 
a constant rambler, as the first paper of the " Sketch- 
Book " delightfully tells us. New York already had 
a theater, to which, even as a boy, he had made 
stolen visits. There was also a rather gay and fast 
society to which the handsome youth had full entry. 
At nineteen he had already written for the Morning 
Chronicle audacious satirical letters on social fol- 
lies, drama, etc., quite in the old Spectator style. 



80 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



Allstou 
1779-1843. 



A few years later lie and liis friend Paulding worked 
the same vein farther in Salmagundi. Such a happy, 
free, and stimulating youth time was then possible 
in no other American city. 

Sent abroad at twenty for his health, he spent in 
Europe two delightful years. He was admitted 
freely to the best foreign and American society, 
apparently on his personal attractions. At Rome 
Washington the influence of his namesake, Washington Allston, 
himself romancer and poet as well as artist, came 
near making Irving a painter. He seemed, even to 
himself, an idler. In truth, he was acquiring, with 
the miraculous ease of a true artist-nature, cosmopol- 
itan culture. Though certainly no ascetic, at home 
or abroad, he had a much more delicate innate refine- 
ment than Franklin, and could doubtless assert with 
Milton, if in a less austere sense, as to the tempta- 
tions of Italy or Paris, " I change but the sk}^, not 
my nature, in crossing the sea." 

At twenty-six, Irving, at first collaborating with 
his brother Peter, began, in light-hearted fashion, a 
travesty upon Dr. Mitchell's pedantic " Picture of 
New York," then just published. Out of this grew, 
as by accident, his delicious " Knickerbocker His- 
tory." The creation of old Diedrich himself is a 
miniature masterpiece. The half-genuine erudition 
of the first five chapters, from the Creation to Hen- 
drick Hudson, indeed, grows rather heavy ; but the 
broad fun of the pretended Dutch annals themselves 
makes an unforgettable book. The very vogue of 
" Knickerbocker," as a houseiiold word ever since, is 
a proof of lasting fame. Irving's work even stimu- 
lated serious study of the forgotten Dutch period 



** Knicker- 
bocker 
History," 
1809. 



THE FIRST MASTERS 81 

in local history. This was the first American book 
of any international popularity, as Franklin's "Auto- 
biography " was kept by his grandson in manuscript 
until 1817. 

Even now Irving did not think of letters as a 
serious profession. He seems, indeed, to have been 
quite willing to remain dependent upon his elder 
brothers, in whose mercantile firm he had a nominal 
position. Just at this time, 1809, he lost his early 
love, Matilda Hoffman, whom he mourned all his 
life. In February, 1815, he again went abroad, and 
remained, for various reasons, seventeen years, a time 
in which he wrote his most characteristic books. 
These years include some creditable service as an 
attache of our foreign embassies. But it is quite 
needless to defend his lifelong patriotism, or the 
adequately national quality of his best work. That 
he felt close kinship and sympathy with the best 
traditions of England is his greatest good fortune, and 
ours. His parentage must have made it doubly 
natural to feel at ease in " Our Old Home." 

The " Sketch-Book " appeared in numbers, and also " Sketch^ 
in book form, first in America, then in England to 13^1*^^320 
forestall piracy. Lovers of the work will recall the 
present Preface, added thirty years after, detailing 
Irving's delightful relations with Walter Scott at 
this early time. The Irvings had meanwhile failed 
in business, and from this period the popular author- 
brother was the chief breadwinner of the harmonious 
and loving family. This supplied a stimulus, perhaps 
needed, for a serious career, and even, apparently, 
gave us the " Sketch-Book." 

It is needless to analyze a book which is familiar 



82 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



" Brace- 
bridge 
Hall," 1822. 



Irving in 
Spain, 
1826-1829. 
" Colum- 
bus," 1828. 
"Granada, 
1829. 

" Compan- 
ions of 
Columbus,' 
1831. 



in every American school. The genial, leisurely style 
of Irving was formed on the best eighteenth century 
English prose, from Addison to Goldsmith. It is a 
style to which the crisper sentence, the swifter thrust, 
of Macaulay is now generally preferred ; but the 
expression was perfectly fitted to the man and the 
material. No writer wins more quickly, or holds 
longer, our affection and good will. The evident 
purpose is to please and divert the reader. Pathos 
is attempted occasionally, with moderate success. 
Of strenuous ethical effort there is little trace. 

The " Sketch-Book " is frankly cosmopolitan in its 
subjects, but Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow 
are at least among the best chapters. Dolph Hey- 
liger, in " Bracebridge Hall," another study of Dutch 
character and local legend, is a signal success in the 
same home field ; while " John Bull " reminds us at 
times of Lowell's boldest Yankee satire. Professor 
Wendell remarks that Irving set the fashion for that 
form of short story which is still especially an 
American art, — or was, at least, down to Mr. Kip- 
ling's advent. " Bracebridge Hall " and " Tales of a 
Traveler " are later, not better, runnings of the same 
wine. Most of the former might have been written 
by a rural Englishman. 

living's love of Spain led to his residence there 
for over three years, to which we owe the lives of 
Columbus and his companions, " The Alhambra," 
" Conquest of Granada," and kindred studies. His 
sympathy with the painter's method is here especially 
felt. The picturesque impressions, the soft, glowing 
color, the indefinable aroma of mediaeval Spain, are 
on almost every page of his "Alhambra." There 



THE FIRST MASTERS 83 

are plenty of more learned and exhaustive historians. " Aiham- 
He may not always be accurate ; he is always grace- '*' ^^^' 
ful, vivid, humane, readable. 

Returning home in 1832, Irving soon settled in his Irving min- 
beautiful "Sunnyside " at Tarrytown, on the Hudson gp^in^ 
which he had made doubly famous, and close by his 1842-1846. 
own Sleepy Hollow. This was home to him for a 
quarter century. He, in fact, only deserted it once, 
reluctantly, to become for four years minister to 
Spain. This proposal was made by Daniel Webster, 
and even Henry Clay remarked, " TTiis is a nomina- 
tion everybody will concur in ! " Since then Ban- 
croft, Hawthorne, Boker, Motley, Lowell, Taylor, 
Howells, Harte, Hardy, and other literary men have 
represented us officially abroad. 

The large "Life of Washington" was the task, "Life of 
almost too heavy, of Irving's old age. The delight- J^^^.^'^^' 
ful study of Goldsmith, a most congenial subject, 1855-1859. 
was throw^n off, with utmost ease, at sixty-six. ^^^^-^ ', 

Irving was not a great original thinker, reformer, 1849. 
or masterful spirit in any field. He founded no 
definite school, though he has had a most helpful and 
genial influence on all literature since. He saw 
much beaut}^ and makes us see it, especially in the 
romantic past. Whether he created, or found ready 
to his hand, the best legendary lore of the Hudson 
Valley, is a problem still discussed. His effects 
always seem to be attained with as little effort as 
Raphael's, but this, surely, is but evidence of per- 
fect balance, sanity, instinctive self-knowledge. He 
was a most tender-hearted, generous, lovable man, 
a cosmopolitan in manners, tastes, and accomplish- 
ments, yet withal a loyal, simple-hearted American. 



84 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



" In the 
Churchyard 
at 

Tarry- 
town," 
by 
Longfellow. 



Finally, lie was a consummate literary artist, since 
he combined rich creative imagination, restraining 
taste, — and moral intention. The last is the least 
obtrusive quality, but present in all his mature 
works, from the '' Sketch-Book " onward. 

But for the merciless yet delicious travesty in 
Ichabod Crane, we might perhaps regret that gentle 
Irving shared Cooper's fiercer dislike for the obtru- 
sive, masterful, progressive Yankee, Yet he would 
hardly have rejected the epitaph written for him by 
our best beloved down-east poet : — 

" How sweet a life was his, how sweet a death ! 
Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours, 
Dying, to leave a memory like the breath 

Of summers full of sunshine and of showers." 

Irving might, indeed, have objected, as Holmes 
has done, to being thus classified so decidedly by 
Longfellow as a humorist. He was particularly 
pleased when a critic discovered a moral lurking 
about his " Fat Gentleman," — the slightest and 
most aimless of masterpieces, — and insisted that 
he always had one in mind. So constant is the 
Puritan strain of seriousness in all Ano^lo-Saxon art. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Irving's works, twenty-three volumes, and " Life and Letters," 
by his nephew, Pierre, four volumes, are published by the Put- 
nams. New York. An excellent brief study of him, by a kin- 
dred spirit, is C. D. Warner's in " American Men of Letters." 
Of the " Sketch-Book " there are numberless editions, with notes, 
for schools. 

For this and nearly every following section Lowell's " Fable 
for Critics" must be consulted. 



THE FIRST MASTERS 85 



TOPICS FOR CLASSROOM WORK 

As the first of our popular authors, Irving's career deserves 
especial attention. From his letters abundant personal details 
can be drawn. Such interviews as those with Mrs. Siddons, 
the poet Campbell's wife, Scott, etc., can be effectively rehearsed. 
The chief source for these also is, of course, Irving's own letters. 
The best scenes of the *' Knickerbocker " could be connected 
wdth study of more serious annals of early New York, as, for 
instance, Brodhead's two volumes, or the more luminous book 
of John Fiske, on the Dutch and Quaker colonists. Indeed, 
the lives of Columbus and Washington also should be regu- 
larly used in the work on American history itself, if only for 
their graceful style and vivid pictures. Any study of the 
best American humor must include much of Irving. A local 
story, like " Dolph Heyliger," may be compared with a rural 
English and a Spanish tale, as skillful studies in local color. 

II. Jai^ies Fenimore Cooper 

Cooper's life was in part almost as stormy as james 
Walter Savao^e Landor's, yet not as a whole Femmore 

^ '^ Cooper, 

tragical, nor, probably, unhappy. His childhood i789-i85i. 

was spent on the wild shores of Otsego Lake, 

New York, where his father had extensive estates 

upon the very edge of the trackless wilderness. His 

love of the forest and lakes was lifelong. Coached 

for college by a rather bigoted English clergyman, he 

was dismissed from Yale when a junior, for idleness 

and mischief (1805). After brief training in a 

merchantman, his father, an ex-congressman, easily 

obtained him a midshipman's berth (1808). The Aroman- 

very next year he was one of a small naval party tke ve^a^s^ 

sent to Oswego, then a village of huts, to build, 

and launch on Lake Ontario, a brig of sixteen guns. 

In 1811 he married Susan De Lancey, of a prominent 

old Huguenot and " Tory " family. This marriage 



86 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

was a most happy one. They had four daughters 
and one son, who survived them. Mrs. Cooper 
induced her husband promptly to leave the navy, 
and, more reluctantly, to settle among her people 
in Westchester County, New York (1817). 

These details all have a direct bearing on Cooper's 
literary career, but at thirty he had never thought 
of writing. He was a fairly well-read man of wide- 
ranging experience, intense but narrow social and 
religious feelings, utterly fearless, patriotic, and 
affectionate, chiefly absorbed in his family and estate. 
A poor English society novel suggested to him an 
"Precau- attempt to surpass it. His effort, "Precaution," 
tion," 1820. wretchedly printed and given out as an English- 
man's book, was a bad failure. Indeed, he knew 
nothing of artificial overcivilized society, and never 
acquired any skill in such themes. The failure 
itself aroused him, and the patriotic Revolutionary 
" Spy," tale, " The Spy," though written with many mis- 
givings, was a great success. Harvey Birch is still 
a favorite character all the world over. Thanks in 
some degree to the gentle treatment of Tory charac- 
ters, the book made a great and immediate sensation 
even in England, where Irving helped secure a pub- 
lisher. Next year it was translated into French, 
then into many languages. 

The popularity of Cooper the romancer has never 
flagged since then. More, probably, than Scott 
himself, he is the world's favorite as a story-teller. 
He received large sums for each and all his thirty- 
odd romances. Sydney Smith's scornful query, 
"Who reads an American book?" had its prompt 
and final answer : All the world reads Cooper. 



1821. 



THE FIRST MASTERS 87 

His third tale, " The Pioneers," Cooper " wrote to •« Pioneers," 
please himself." The scenes are on his beloved ^^^^' 
Otsego. The types of the frontier life are memories 
from his boyhood. Here already we meet his In- 
dians, chivalric and stanch in friendship, poetic and 
flowery in speech, yet savages still to the core. Even 
the immortal Leatherstocking appears, already an old 
man. Above all, the love of the wilderness, the 
rhapsodies over forest scenery and life, recur in 
nearly every chapter. 

In 1817 had begun, with a certain suddenness, that 
great Trek from New England and the whole East, 
westward beyond the Ohio, — a movement which, reen- 
forced more and more from beyond the Atlantic, was 
destined never to cease until the buffalo, the wild 
Indian, the frontier itself, have all become merely 
a memory, soon to be a tradition only. The majestic 
meaning of that migration Cooper fully realized, and 
uttered in the closing lines of '* The Pioneers." 

He lived to write better stories than this. " Deer- "Deer- 
slayer " gives us a far more perfect panorama of Otsego. \^i^' 
Both that tale and "Pathfinder " offer a much nobler "Path- 
and completer portraiture of Leatherstocking. " The 1340. ' 
Prairie " affords an unrivaled picture of the wild social " Prairie," 

1827 

life among the true pioneers, and of its primeval en- 
vironment. The popular favorite among all the 
Leatherstocking Tales, however, is " The Last of " Last of the 
the Mohicans." f826!'^°''" 

Nevertheless, Cooper's essential qualities were 
already clear. The novel of incident with simple 
characters of humble social rank, in an outdoor 
setting, was a mighty instrument, fitted to his hand 
as perhaps to no other. One wide domain he had 



88 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

still to enter, for he knew the sea at least as well as 
"Pilot," the forest. "The Pilot," suggested by Scott's 
}f^Q^ "Pirate," — which Cooper thought a good piece of 

Rover," work by a landsman, — appeared early in 1824, 
1828. ,, ^^^^ ^g^^ j^^^gj, „ -^ -^^28. These and other such 

tales of the wilderness and of the ocean are Cooper's 
chief gifts to men. They are abiding sources of 
healthful enjoyment to millions of readers. 
" History of Later in life he made a most exhaustive and impar- 
^^^f,*^ tial history of the American navy, followed by biog- 
1839. raphies of our early marine heroes. This is still an 

jjiggf f*" indispensable and authoritative work. But unhappily 
1846. these are not the chief events of Cooper's later years. 

Success brought large income, as well as fame. 
During 1822-1826 Cooper lived in New York City, 
and was the center of the best literary circle then 
existing in the States, including Bryant, Halleck, 
etc. The years 1826 to 1833 he and his family 
spent in Europe. But Cooper had not the genial 
nature, the cosmopolitan sympathies, the open mind, 
the artistic restraint, of Irving, or of Longfellow. 
He was pugnacious, hypercritical, opinionated. He 
misused most grossly the form of romance, mak- 
ing it the vehicle for savage attacks on the English 
people and others, later for even more savage diatribes 
against his own folk, especially in " Home as Found." 
" Home as He became personally the best-hated man in both 

1838 ' hemispheres : while yet some of his bitterest foes 

spent sleepless nights devouring his latest romances. 
He entered on a long series of libel suits against the 
chief newspapers of his state. These suits he con- 
ducted chiefly in person, with consummate ability 
and energy. «nd invariably won. But the force 



THE FIRST MASTERS 89 

and time thus squandered might better have been 
spent in perfecting his masterpieces. 

The detailed story of Cooper's later life, as set 
forth masterfully by Professor Lounsbury, is a most 
fascinating psychological study. Yet it throws little 
light on his purely literary career. The charming 
preface composed by his daughter for " Deerslayer " 
gives an impression that his delight in such creative 
work, and his happy family life, were hardly ruffled 
by the storm of slanderous abuse that beat upon him 
for twenty years. 

In the very last year of his life there was a wide- 
spread reaction, and a general expression of pride in 
our greatest romancer. Upon his deathbed he, un- 
fortunately for us, forbade any publication of his 
letters or biographical materials in the family pos- 
session. He died, as he had lived since his return to 
America, in the paternal homestead at Cooperstown 
on Otsego, since destroyed by fire. 

Cooper himself was fully aware of his inferiority 
to Scott as to breadth of range and vigor in character 
drawing. He has nothing of Hawthorne's marvel- 
ous genius in the choice and arrangement of words. 
He is no supreme master of insight into the mysteri- 
ous depths of the human heart. Nearly all his work 
bears marks of haste, and slight incongruities, even 
in the simple plots, are easily found. In general he 
will never appeal as strongly to the highly cultivated 
and critical few as do George Eliot, Thackeray, 
Balzac, and Scott, at their best. 

Yet our national attitude toward Cooper should 
always be one of pride and abundant gratitude. 
Heroic manliness, loyal good fellowship, even be- 



90 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

tween men of diverse races, healthful outdoor life, 
simplicity of speech and action, generosity toward 
the weak, devout faith in God, he has depicted, as he 
exemplified them in his own life. In impressing 
upon the imagination the large outlines and gran- 
deur of nature upon our continent, he is perhaps 
superior to Bryant, to Parkman, or to any other. 
He and his Leatherstocking will always stand among 
the most heroic figures in our first century of true 
literature. Moreover, judged by the extent of his 
influence as a popular author, he is quite unrivaled 
among Americans, possibly among all mankind ; that 
is perhaps of itself a sufficient monument. Over his 
grave in the Cooperstown cemetery towers, most fitly, 
an heroic statue of Leatherstocking. 

While Irving was matured. Cooper seems to have 
been only distracted, by life abroad. But of each it 
is true, that he won his first notable success at home, 
with a native subject, and repeated the same feat 
often in later life. Both belonged by birth to the 
middle East. Irving was almost English still, while 
Cooper, the less mellow nature, came of long Ameri- 
can descent. Irving was a cosmopolitan artist ; his 
Spanish works, perhaps his English sketches, are as 
skillful, though not so novel and original, as his 
Dutch pictures. Cooper's native Americans, white 
or red, are always better drawn than his Europeans. 
These two men and their friends seem to demonstrate 
that in and about New York the conditions favorable 
to literary success were first attained. The third 
member of our first notable group was, like Frank- 
lin, a Westward pilgrim from true Puritan stock. 



THE FIRST MASTERS 91 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

There are numberless editions of the novels. Perhaps " The 
Mohawk" (Putnaras, New York) in thirty-two volumes is the 
most available. More popular than any other tale is " Last of 
the Mohicans " (1826), for which there are annotated school 
editions galore. See especially Strunk's, Globe School Book 
Company, 1900. 

Professor Lounsbury, who wrote on Cooper for the " American 
Men of Letters," had of course a peculiarly difficult task. Some 
of Cooper's own prefaces and notes occasionally give helpful 
light on his life and work. Some personal details may be 
sought also in Wilson's "Bryant and his Friends." 



SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASS WORK 

Special studies of actual American landscape and scenery 
may be very profitably made in connection with Cooper. The 
contrast of his accounts with present conditions is often most 
striking. His delineation of Indians may be compared with 
Hiawatha, Ramona, with Simms's powerful figures in " The 
Yemassee," and with the real red man. A special study of 
Leatherstocking, carried through the five tales where he appears, 
may be made. Cooper's rougher borderers, women, and sailors, 
and his own religious ideas, are also stimulating topics. The 
larger histories of the " French and Indian " War, e.g. Park- 
man's "Wolfe and Montcalm," should perhaps be combined 
with the reading of " The Last of the Mohicans." But for boys 
Cooper will need no bush. 



III. William Cctllen Bryant 

Through his mother, Bryant, like Longfellow, was wiiiiam 
descended from John Alden ; and the Bryants were 2^^®^^. 
also of Pilgrim stock. The poet was born in Cum- 1794-1878. 
mington, Massachusetts, the son of a country doctor, 
of moderate means. The father was a lover of good 
literature, in sympathy with the boy's taste for versi- 
f3dng. One of Bryant's earliest favorites was Pope's 



92 THE AGE O:^ DEPENDENCE 

Homer. He was early well grounded in Greek and 
Latin, but after two years at Williams College (then 
a small school), he changed over to the study of law 
(1812). But " Thanatopsis " had even then been 
"written. Though improved in a later revision, this 
was an amazing performance for any boy of seven- 
teen. No wonder that the law soon grew distasteful. 
The chief marvel is that the genius of Bryant is 
still best illustrated by these first verses. Even 
" The Flood of Years," sixty-four years later, is 
simply a good pendant to " Thanatopsis," which 
seems the utterance of an octogenarian no less. 

In 1821, two years after the " Sketch-Book," ap- 
" Poems," peared Cooper's " Spy " and Bryant's collected poems. 
1821. This is the true beginning of our literary annals. The 

most ambitious and scholarly of the poems, " The 
Ages," had just been composed for the Harvard Phi 
Beta Kappa society. His verses brought to the young 
country lawyer an invitation to New York (1825) as 
assistant editor of a short-lived magazine. In 1826 
he became assistant editor, from 1829 to 1878 was 
editor-in-chief, of the New York Evening Post, He, 
with Peter Cooper and Horace Greeley, were for 
many years, perhaps, the best-known citizens of the 
swift-growing metropolis. His married life (1821- 
1866) was ideally happy. 

It may at first appear as if Bryant must have been 
distracted by journalism from a fuller and richer 
career as a poet. He himself, in the earlier decades, 
often repined, and struggled to escape. But it is 
more likely that in both careers he accomplished 
just what he was best fitted to do. 

His poetic message is fully and clearly uttered. 



one mood: 
reverent 



THE FIRST MASTERS 93 

He is certainly akin to Wordsworth, though far less 
a mystic even than he. He has no such keen sympa- 
thy with other souls, and no such dramatic creative- 
ness, as Coleridge revealed at once by his " Ancient 
Mariner." Our boyhood's favorite, " The African 
Chief," has indeed a certain dramatic quality ; but 
the incident, in every detail, was true, and Bryant 
only transferred it to smooth verse. He is a moral A poet of 
and didactic poet, always, speaking in his own calm, 
deliberate, manly voice ; and his verse is nearly all faith, 
the expression of a single mood : pensive reverence. 
" Nature is eternal, man ephemeral ; " that is his 
first and last word. In " Thanatopsis," hills and 
vales, woods and rivers, and 

" Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, 
Are but the solemn decorations all 
Of the great tomb of man." 

So, riding on the " Flood of Years," we behold feast- " Flood u 
ers and toilers, sturdy swain and pallid student, — me^'" 

" A moment on the mounting billows seen, 
The flood sweeps over them and they are gone." 

Bryant, then, by no means fulfilled Emerson's 
vision of a time when all " that which is now life 
shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall 
add a richer strain to the song." To this sturdy 
Puritanic reformer, politician, orator, editor, most of 
life expressed itself in plain, often polemic, prose. 
In weariness, grief, or discouragement, he turns to 
nature for consolation^ and to his verse, so inspired, 
other men turn, in just such hours. 

Clear, pure, and somewhat cold, that utterance 
flows. He sounds no trumpet call to action, that 



94 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



Our native 
poets have 
neglected 
their Greek 
masters. 



could fire the heart of a youth, or a people, like the 
'' Battle Hymn of the Republic," or Lowell's "Pres- 
ent Crisis." Even the closing stanzas of his most 
ambitious poem, " The Ages," leave us simply pen- 
sive still. In a war lyric, the strongest stanza, his 
most famous quatrain, is a moral text after all: 
" Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again." 

His utterance is always easy, natural, and digni- 
fied. Often it is sublime. His simple metrical forms 
are always befitting. His majestic ''blank verse," 
in particular, is at times almost Miltonic, certainly 
quite unapproached by our other poets. His large, 
serene outlines complete the picture he would set 
before us, and the last stanza often unites and uplifts 
the whole. " The Evening Wind " and " Crowded 
Street " are among the simplest examples of this 
quiet artistic mastery shown in the final touch. 

Late in life Bryant translated the entire " Iliad " 
and " Odyssey " into smooth, dignified, rather slow, 
blank verse. Despite some little embroidery of 
Homer's plainest passages, this rendering is a very 
faithful one. It was a large and helpful tribute 
to classical humanism, the largest yet made by 
an American. Indeed, our other most prominent 
authors have had very inadequate familiarity with 
those Hellenic masterpieces from which Milton, 
Gray, Landor, Tennyson, Swinburne, and Stephen 
Phillips have drawn so large a share of inspiration. 

Bryant's physical vitality was wonderful. He was 
never ill, and retained perfect command of all his 
organs and muscles to eighty-four. His death was 
the result of a fall just after delivering one of his 
memorable public orations, at the erection of a 



THE FIRST MASTERS 95 

statue to Mazzini, the Italian patriot. It would be 
difficult to find or to imagine a happier end. In 
spite of constant generous and quiet charity in his 
lifetime, Mr. Bryant left a large fortune. The Post^ 
in particular, after many years of heroic struggle 
and scanty income, finally became a very valuable 
property. 

Besides his poems, Bryant is of some impor- 
tance here for his memorial addresses, beginning 
with those upon Cooper and Irving. His own life 
work, in turn, was nobly summed up in an eloquent 
oration by George William Curtis. His conscien- 
tious work on the Post for a half-century has en- 
tered into the very growth of the nation, but it is 
the doom of all such writing to perish with the con- 
tests and problems of the passing day. 

Mr. Bryant, especially in old age, had a most noble 
head and face, often reproduced in sculpture, paint- 
ing, and the lesser arts of design. A striking por- 
trait statue stands in the park renamed after him 
by the city of New York. The great city has known 
no purer, busier, more conscientious life. To give 
him the foremost, or a foremost, place among our 
poets seems to one at a distance the wholly uncriti- 
cal partiality of personal affection. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Bryant's life has been written, and his works, both prose and 
poetry, edited by Parke Godwin. The life, by his friend John 
Bigelow, in " American Men of Letters," is discursive, but gives 
some striking glimpses of its rather elusive subject. R. H. Stod- 
dard, in his prefatory essay to the poems, claims for Bryant the 
highest position. The latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Bri- 
tannica does not mention him at all. 



96 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOM WORK 

Such verse as the '^Inscription" (beginning, "The thick 
roof"), "A Rain-Dream," "Robert of Lincohi," "Death of the 
Flowers," " The Prairies," " The Fountain," etc., should be veri- 
fied in each detail, in the open air. The " Antiquity of Freedom " 
combines happily his best qualities ; the personifications and the 
allusion to our liberty cap', which is the mitra of the ancient 
Phrygian and fez of the modern Asiatic, will bear careful 
explanation. Bryant's fullest revelation of personal and religious 
feeling is in " The Cloud on the Way." (See Bigelow's "Life," 
p. 283.) Is Bryant cold? Is he monotonous? Does he dwell 
too constantly on death rather than life? 

What our poets say of each other is of interest. Lowell 
especially, in the "Fable for Critics," analyzes Bryant; in his 
letters he expresses regret for his rather audacious tone. On 
Bryant's seventieth birthday there are notable poems by Holmes, 
Whittier, Lowell, Taylor, Stoddard, and others. See also 
Stoddard's and Stedman's poems after the master's death. 
Bryant himself could not write "occasional" verse. 

The simple, austere, daily life of the old poet is itself a profit- 
able study. (See especially Bigelow's "Life," pp. 259-263.) 



IV. The " Knickerbocker " Group 

We have now seen three men, of unquestioned 
importance in literature, rise suddenly into general 
notice about the year 1820. Of course the}^ were 
not alone. Most of the lesser writers are already 
forgotten, with the numberless ambitious but short- 
lived literary periodicals of their day. But the 
careers of Irving, Cooper, and Bryant sufficed to 
prove that a strong man of letters could have a suc- 
cessful career, and, directly or indirectly, could win 
through his writings fame, a livelihood, even wealth. 

Perhaps the most serious loss to our early litera- 
ture was the premature death of Drake. His " Cul- 



THE FIRST MASTERS 97 

prit Fay" was composed in three days, at the age Joseph 
of twenty-one, and it still remains the best poem of DrakT*^ 
purely creative fancy, based on real familiarity with 1795-1820. 
outdoor sights and sounds, yet produced on Ameri- 
can soil. It is almost as free from the Puritan 
temptation to preach in verse as Poe's best lyrics. 
In both respects it will bear comparison with Low- 
ell's " Launfal," a didactic story from an alien 
atmosphere. This pure, happy, enthusiastic poet 
had, to be sure, lived as many years as Keats : but 
even the lyric singer may come late to his heri- 
tage, as Beranger did, or Clough. 

Fitz- Greene Halleck, on the other hand, lived out Fitz-Greene 
a long and useful life, fully demonstrating that he ^^igeV 
belonged, in letters, to the useful but commonplace 
majority, the men of lovable character, fair taste, 
and industrious effort. He is uplifted into momen- 
tary prominence by his devotion to Drake, whom he 
lamented in a famous bit of tender verse : — 

" Green be the turf above thee." 

The modern Greeks appreciate his spirited lyric on 
Marcos Bozzaris, though they are amused that he 
employed by mistake the vocative form of the first 
name, and shifted the accent on the second. 

Irving's lifelong friend, James K. Paulding, is still James K. 
remembered for his poem, " The Backwoodsman " i779_i86o'. 
(1818), his "Dutchman's Fireside" (1831), still 
valuable for its vivid " local color," or his '' Life of 
Washington" (1835). His larger energies were 
devoted to political satire, and to politics. 

These, with Willis, who will be mentioned later, 
are the chief minor fiorures in the " Knickerbocker " 



98 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

group. We may perhaps best add here the most 
isolated and unaccountable figure in American let- 
ters, since his meteoric career at least belongs to 
the same section of the country, and essentially to 
the same generation. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

See especially, for the periodical literature of this time, the 
monograph of Dr. W. B. Cairns, " On the Development of 
American Literature from 1815 to 1833," Wisconsin Univer- 
sity, 1898. As to Paulding, Drake, and Halleck, the student 
will find sufficient extracts in the Stedman Library. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE CLASSROOM 

The " Culprit Fay" should be read and studied, lovingly, for 
its graceful and local "fauna and flora," as well as for its 
exuberant fancy. The instructor may of course open also the 
whole world of Faerie, from Spenser and " Midsummer Mght's 
Dream " down, or up, to the Keltic sources. (See, e.g., Keight- 
ley's " Fairy Mythology.") 

V. Edgar Allan Poe 

Edgar Allan Less than any other author is Poe, the romancer 
1^9-1849 ^^^^ poet, to be interpreted by his surroundings and 
outward life. Indeed, his creations have as little 
vital relation with mankind as could well be. In him 
more than in almost any other man, unless it be 
Shelley, an alien soul seems to be beating its wings 
against the barred cage of human incarnation. So 
we can hardly hope that this author's environment 
will be of essential aid in the study of his works. 
There is at least, however, much in the tale of Poe's 
youth to soften any austere Puritanic judgment upon 
his grievous failings as a man. He does not seem to 



THE FIRST MASTERS 99 

me ever to have been fully sane. His high-strung 
nerves, distracting indulgence from earliest child- 
hood, wild temper, and ecstatic unearthly imagination, 
probably made it impossible for him to lead what we 
regard as a normal or rational life. 

Of partly Keltic stock, Poe was the child of a pair 
of actors, born in Boston when his mother was an 
active member of a traveling company. Two years 
later she died in poverty, and her three infants were 
scattered among strangers. Poe's father seems to 
have been already dead from consumption. Edgar's 
foster father, Mr. Allan, received him at first reluc- 
tantly, at his wife's entreaty, but brought him up in 
extravagant luxury. He was educated in England 
and in Richmond, Virginia, in fashionable private 
schools. The boy, like the man, was capricious, 
dictatorial, vain, jealous, selfish by instinct, yet at 
times generous in fitful fashion. He was a brilliant 
student, and excelled in running and swimming. A 
fancied disappointment in love came very early into 
his boyish experience. Of real friendship he was, 
perhaps, never capable. 

When he entered the University of Virginia, in 
1826, he was already fond of drinking brandy and of 
card playing. Ten months later he came home to 
Richmond with highest honors in languages, — and 
a burden of twenty-five hundred dollars of gambling 
debts, which Mr. Allan refused to pay. Poe promptly 
ran away to Boston, published a very thin volume of 
aerial juvenile verse, and enlisted as a private in the 
regular army, swearing that he was already of age. 
Mrs. Allan died in 1829. Perhaps at her last 
request, Poe's release was soon after obtained, and 



100 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



John P. 

Kennedy, 

1795-1870. 



Hawthorne, 
contrasted 
with Poe, is 
sane. 



July 1, 1830, he entered West Point, again falsifying 
the record of his age, as he was really too old for the 
academy. Six months later he obtained his discharge 
there, by court-martial for flagrant disobedience. 
Mr. Allan had married again, and from this time 
utterly cast off his foster son. 

Poe now attempted to support himself by his pen, 
first in Baltimore. Only the kindly friendship of 
J. P. Kennedy, apparently, kept him from absolute 
starvation. In 1835 he married his cousin, a child 
of thirteen. The story of his struggles for a living, 
as editor, author, and hack-writer, in Baltimore, 
Philadelphia, and New York, his quarrels with co- 
editors, employers, and others, his lapses into drunk- 
enness and opium-eating, are only too familiar. His 
child wife clung to him fondly till she died, in utter 
poverty, in 1847. His own death, two years after- 
ward, was under peculiarly harrowing and ignomini- 
ous conditions. 

Poe's tales and poems hardly touch on these facts, 
or, indeed, upon ordinary human conditions at all. 
Whenever we take up any page of his, we instantly 
step, as it were, into another region than reality, into 
an air charged with mysterious sounds, and terrors 
vaguely felt. Even his most detailed descriptions, 
as of the house of Usher, or of the chamber into 
which the raven flits, only heighten our sense of 
utmost remoteness. Hawthorne's realm is still our 
familiar world, though a soft gray light transforms 
it, and we walk with him strangely endowed, for the 
hour, with a supernatural insight into the mind and 
heart of any brother-mortal whom we meet ; under 
Poe's guidance, we can never surmise what will 



THE FIRST MASTERS 101 

happen, save that we are not to escape until our 
nerves are duly unstrung. 

Poe believed and taught that poetry, or any form 
of true literature, must make its effective appeal, 
through the feelings only, to our innate sense of 
beauty. For those men, the overwhelming majority, 
who believe that language, however imaginative, must 
always address itself, rather, through the reason and 
experience, to our consciousness of moral truth, 
Poe's finest utterance can be little save sound and 
fury. Emerson, himself a lifelong rhymer, when 
Poe's name was mentioned, only recalled him, with 
an effort, as " the jingle man " ! 

Yet Poe saw and revealed, as no American had Poekne^r 
done before him, at least the silvern side of a great i^^uSc!^ 
artistic truth. Language is, indeed, fully alive only 
on the living lip : that is, as sound. Verse, espeoially 
lyric poetry, is the form of utterance nearest to 
music, with which it was probably twin-born. Both 
are intended to arouse elemental passionate feeling, 
rather than calm logical thought. 

The most popular poem of Poe, possibly the most 
famous lyric of our whole literature, is " The 
Raven." Despite his elaborate and mystifying ac- 
count of its origin, it was probably an inevitable 
lyric confession. Indeed, one reason for the lasting 
popularity of this, rather than of any other poem by 
Poe, is that we do believe we understand it. It is 
entirely intelligible, if the chamber is the haunted 
heart, the raven remorse. The bird nearest of kin is 
the Promethean vulture, but the modern sufferer is 
self -condemned, and hopes for no rescuing Heracles. 

And yet, the despair, however real, is here set to 



102 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

music as masterly, as fitting, as elaborate as in any- 
great sonata. The resources of our speech are ex- 
hausted in the quest for rhyme, assonance, and 
alliteration. Even the hissing letter s, that spoils so 
much of our English melody, is made effective in the 

" Silken sad uncertain 
Rustling of each purple curtain." 

When this poem is first recited to a high-strung, 
imaginative child of ten, though he be ever so familiar 
with " Marmion," or " Hiawatha," or even Tennyson's 
"Bugle Song," he will dance with delight and cry, 
" Oh ! I didn't know before that words could be used 
like that ! " He will even feel the grewsome, lonely 
sadness of the finale, — long years may it be ere he 
truly understands it ! Every such incident is a 
signal triumph of fine art. 
A poet of Far more literally than Br3^ant's is Poe's verse 

despSr? * limited to a single mood ; for in Poe's art that 
limit is also the bound of his own nature. He dis- 
dained, or was unable, to share the joys and sorrows 
of others, and so missed nearly all that is best in 
human life. "Ulalume" is in the same general key 
as " The Raven," with the undertone of despair and 
horror less perfectly within artistic control. " The 
Bells " seems to have been begun in a calmer mood 
as a deliberate piece of art, but the fourth stanza 
surely came from a tortured and haunted soul. Oc- 
casionally, not often, Poe uses a touch of realism, not 
in itself grewsome, but only to heighten by con- 
trast the sense of horror. So especially, in " The 
Sleeper," the couplet : — 

" Against whose portals she hath thrown, 
In childhood, many an idle stone." 



THE FIRST MASTERS 103 

Even in single lines of Poe there is unearthly 
beauty and charm. The second stanza of " To 
Helen" can stand beside Keats's glimpse from his 
casement forth on perilous seas of fairyland. But 
if his poetry is to be seriously interpreted to children 
at all, we must begin with the very last lines in the 
volume, entitled " Alone," and make clear the utter 
morbidness and falsity, for any happy normal nature, 
of the last line. 

Most of what has been said as to the thin volumes 
of poems could be repeated of the best among the 
many tales. The marvelous command of language 
as an appeal to the nerves, the mysterious music in 
the phrase, is there also. As Professor Wendell says, 
Poe's prose must be read aloud, to realize how true 
each cadence is. And it is into the same dim land 
of shadows and shadowy horrors that we step. The 
" House of Usher " stands close by the 

" Dank tarn of Auber," 
" In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir," 

beside which we trembled in " Ulalume." Whether 
in the maelstrom, the balloon, or the madhouse, our 
guide is equally reassuring. 

To be sure, the tales, as compared with the poems, 
were sometimes composed in relatively calm moods, 
sometimes too in an effort to hit the known tastes of 
a coy editor, at other times in mere petty willfulness 
and mischief. They are, therefore, less simple, 
intense, or subjective than the poems. In particular, 
the display of second-hand erudition is a trick which 
is at times worn threadbare ; for, apart from an om- 
nivorous reading, and retention, of the poetry of 



104 THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 

passionate feeling, Poe's range of knowledge is super- 
ficial, and not remarkably wide. His power of solv- 
ing " cryptograms " and kindred puzzles does really 
appear to have been preternaturally keen. 

Prophetic keenness, as in early appreciation of 
Tennyson and Mrs. Browning, fierce jealousy, as in 
his assault on Longfellow for plagiarism from Poe 
himself, and the excessively narrow limitations of 
his artistic creed, are all revealed by this strange 
being in his literary criticism, — which was mostly 
wasted on contemporaries now utterly forgotten. 

Instead of any steadfast development, this life is a 
tale of squandered genius, premature wreck, and 
utter ignominy at the close. There could hardly be 
imasrined an environment in whicli the tale would 
have been a happy one. Indeed, Catullus, Heine, 
De Musset, Burns, Poe, and their kind, might half 
tempt us to think that the lyric poets of passion can 
learn only in bitterest remorse and suffering what 
they tell in song. Yet the prolonged, honored, spot- 
less career of a Pindar or a Sophocles, of an Uhland or 
a Tennyson, is truer to the best possibilities of our 
common humanity. Even La Fontaine, Beranger, 
Hugo, with all their Gallic fire and vivacity, lived 
long and not unhappy lives. 

A handful of Poe's poems, but little else, seems 
secure from the tooth of Time. As a master of phras- 
ing, of rhythm, of the subtle harmonies of sound apart 
from the problem of their meaning, he owes remark- 
ably little to any one, even to Coleridge, and has been 
surpassed perhaps by Swinburne only, of English 
lyrists. It is doubtful if Byron's personal excesses 
had any vital influence over Poe, whose physical 



THE FIRST MASTERS 105 

vices, indeed, appear to have been such as injured 
himself only. His literary work is remarkably clear 
of anything like coarse vulgarity or foul suggestion. 
He can hardly be said to have had disciples, unless 
indeed it be in France, though all artists in verse, 
and all story-tellers too who practice artful mystifica- 
tion, must study him as a master. Of technique, of 
the art of expression, he was a cunning master, like 
the " faultless painter " Andrea del Sarto ; but like 
him, also, he had himself little truth to utter, for he 
had missed the best of life. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Poe is fortunate to have found, in the poet and interpretative 
critic, George E. Woodberry, as sympathetic a biographer and 
expositor as any healthy human nature with temperate blood 
is ever likely to prove. Professor Woodberry made thorough 
preparatory studies for the Life, in " American Men of Letters," 
and later, with Mr. Stedman, has completed the monumental 
edition of Poe's works. To his work, rather than to the errors 
and contradictions of previous authorities, reference must be 
made. Many willful falsehoods from Poe's own lips misled the 
earlier biographers, among whom was Mr. Lowell. A generous 
estimate of Poe by Mr. Mabie, printed a year or two ago in the 
Atlantic, may be preferred to the present rather hostile study. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOM WORK 

More than enough in this direction, perhaps, appears already 
in the text. " The House of Usher," " The Gold-Bug," " The 
Murders in the Rue Morgue," " The Black Cat," are among the 
most widely known of Poe's tales. " Annabel Lee " is possibly 
the poem least unsuited to childhood. 

Lowell's verses on Poe in " Fable for Critics " should, of course^ 
be read. 



106 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES — (1800-1830) 



1800-1810 



American History- 



American Literature 



1801-1809. Presidency of Jefferson. 



1802. Ohio admitted as a state. 

1803. Louisiana purchased from 
France. 

1804. Expedition against Tripoli. 



1808. Foreign slave trade ceased by 
constitutional prohibition. 

1809-1817. Presidency of Madison. 



1801. Brockden Brown's "Edgar 
Huntley," " Clara Howard," 
" Jane Talbot." 
New York Evening Post 
founded. 



1804. Marshall's "Life of Wash- 
ington." 

1805. Abiel Holmes's " American 
Annals." 

1807. Irving and Paulding, Sal- 
magundi Papers. 

1808. Wm. Cullen Bryant (born 
1794) published the "Em- 
bargo," and other poems. 

1809. I r V i n g ' s " Knickerbocker 
History." 



1811-1820 



1812-1815. Second War with Eng- 
land. 



1814. Capture of Washington by 
British. 

1815. January, Battle of New 
Orleans. 



1812. Joel Barlow died. 

1813. Paulding's "John Bull and 
Brother Jonathan." 

1814. Key wrote " Star-Spangled 
Banner." 

1815. Mrs. Sigourney's "Moral 
Pieces." 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



107 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES — (1800-1830) 



1800-1810 



English and Enropean Literature 


English and Enropean History 


1801. 


Miss Edgeworth's Tales. 


1801. Union of Great Britain and 
Ireland. 


1802. 


Scott's " Minstrelsy of the 
Border." 




1804. 


Schiller's " Wilhelm Tell." 


1804-1815. Empire of Napoleon I. 


1805. 


Scott's " Lay of the T-ast 
Minstrel." 


1805. Battle of Trafalgar. 

1806. Dissolution of the Holy Ro- 
man Empire. 


1807. 


Lamb's "Tales from Shake- 
speare." 
Moore's Irish Melodies. 




1808. 


Scott's "Marmion." 
Goethe's " Faust," Part I. 


1808-1814. Peninsular War. 


1809. 


Byron's " English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers." 
Campbell's " Gertrude of 
Wyoming." 




1810. 


Scott's " Lady of the Lake." 





1811-1820 



1811. Jane Austen's " Sense and 
Sensibility." 

Goethe's " Dichtung und 
Wahrheit." 

Shelley's "Necessity of Athe- 
ism." 

Niehuhr's ^^ Roman His- 
tory." 

1812. Byron's " Childe Harold." 
Landor's " Count Julian." 
Jane Austen's " Pride and 
Prejudice." 

1813. Byron's " Bride of Abydos." 
Shelley's "Queen Mab." 

1814. Byron's " Corsair." 
Scott's " Waverley." 
AVordsworth's " Excursion." 

1815. Scott's " Guy Mannering." 
Scott's "Lord of the Isles." 



1816. Scott's "Antiquary," 



1812. Napoleon invades Russia. 

1813. Defeat of French at Leipsic. 

1814. Abdication of Napoleon. 



1815. Return of Napoleon from 
Elba. 

Battle of Waterloo. 
Napoleon taken to St. Helena. 



108 



THE AGE OF DEPENDENCE 



1811-1820— Con^inwed 



American History 


American Literature 


1817-1825. Presidency of Monroe. 


"1817. 


Bryant's " Thanatopsis " 


1817. 


American Colonization So- 




printed in the North Ameri- 




ciety. 




can Review. 

Noah Webster's "Diction- 
ary." 

Wirt's "Life of Patrick 
Henry." 






1818. 


Paulding's "Backwoods- 
man." 


1819. 


Florida purchased from 


1819. 


Irving's " Sketch-Book." 




Spain. 




Drake and Halleck published 
the " Croaker " poems. 


1820. 


Missouri Compromise. 


1820. 


Cooper's "Precaution." 



1821-1830 



1821. Mexico becomes independent. 


1821. 


Brj^ant's Poems. 


"Missouri Compromise." 




Cooper's " Spy." 


Slavery to be forever pro- 




R. H. Dana's " Idle Man." 


hibited north of 3(3° 30' N. 








1822. 


Irving's " BracebridgeHall." 




1823. 


Cooper's " Pilot." 


1824. La Fayette revisits America. 


1824. 


Mrs. Child's "Hobomok." 


1825-1829. J. Q. Adams's Presi- 


1825. 


Mrs. Child's "Rebels." 


dency. 




June 17, Webster's Speech at 
Bunker Hill. 


1826. Death of John Adams and 


1826. 


Cooper's " Last of the Mohi- 


Thomas Jefferson. 




cans." 




1827. 


Cooper's "Red Rover and 

Prairie." 

Poe's " Tamerlane." 

R. H. Dana's " Buccaneer." 




1827-1838. Audubon's "Birds of 






America." 




1828. 


Hawthorne's " Fanshawe." 
Irving's " Columbus." 


1829-1837. JackBon's Presidency. 


1829. 


Irving's "Granada." 




1830. 


Cooper's *' Waterwitch." 
Daniel Webster's Speeches 
against Hayne. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



109 



1811-1820- 


- Continued 


English and European Literature 


English and European History 


1817. Keats's Poems. 




Moore's " Lalla Rookh." 




Mary Shelley's "Franken- 




stein." 




1818. Keats's "Endymion." 




Scott's "Rob Roy" and 




'•Heart of Midlothian." 




llallam's "Middle A^es." 




1819. Byron's "Don Juan." 


1819. Steamers cross the Atlantic. 


Shelley's "Cenci." 




1820. Keats's "St. Agnes" and 


1820. Death of George III. 


"Hyperion." 




Scott's "Ivanhoe," "Mon- 




astery," "Abbot." 




Shelley's "Prometheus Un- 




bound." 





1821-1830 



1821. 



De Quincey's " Opi urn- 
Eater." 

Hazlitt's " Table Talk." 
Mill's " Political Economy." 
Scott's "Kenilworth," " Pi- 



1822. 
1824. 



1825. 
1826, 



182(;>- 

1827, 



rate. 
Shelley's 
Goethe's * 
Lamb's " 
Roger's " 
Landor's 



" Adouais." 
' Wilhelm Meister." 
Elia." 
Italy." 
Imaginary Con- 



1830. 



versations 
MissMitford's"OurVillage." 
Carlyle's " Schiller." 
Mrs.Browning's early poems. 
Disraeli's " Vivian Gray." 
-1831. Heine's ''Eeisebilder." 
Bulwer's " Pelham." 
De Quincey's " Murder as a 
Fine Art." 

Hallam's "Constitutional 
History. 
Hood's 
Fairies." 

A. and C. Tennyson 's 
of Two Brothers." 
Heine's "Buck der Lieder." 
Mrs. Hemans's " Songs of 
the Affections." 
Tennyson's " Poems, Chiefly 
Lyrical." 



Midsummer 
Poems 



1821. Death of Napoleon. 



1822-1829. Greek war for indepen- 
dence. 



1830. Revolution in France. Bour- 
bons expelled. 



PART II 

THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

(1830-1870) 



INTRODUCTION 

CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP IN THE EAST 

IN our first group of creative artists, just discussed, 
the extreme East has been conspicuously absent. 
Perhaps the mellowing effect of time on the nature of 
the Puritans was especially slow in their chief strong- 
hold and oldest American home. The loss of Frank- 
lin was undoubtedly very serious, and perhaps, 
humanly speaking, accidental. Bryant in his youth 
wavered between Boston and New York, and is 
indeed, despite his faithful half-century at his post 
in Manhattan, still counted by many, and with much 
reason, among the New England and Puritan poets. 
Whenever the proud story of New England is fully 
told, the lives of all such pilgrim sons must be in- 
cluded. Every younger state to the Westward has 
counted them as leaders among its men of action and 
of thought. 

Meantime, the strenuous intellectual and moral 
life on Massachusetts Bay has continued unbroken. 
Harvard College has always been a center of serious 
scholarship ; and if adequate breadth in scientific his- 
torical and linguistic studies has everywhere been but 
slowly attained, our oldest university has not a record, 
certainly, of timid conservatism. Indeed a suspicion 
that Harvard was dangerously " liberal " in its ten- 
dencies led, with other causes, to the very creation 
of her oldest rival, Yale, in 1701. Most of the 
I 113 



114 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



Revolutionary statesmen in New England were 
scholars, who were well read in ancient and modern 
history, and applied its lessons in the shaping of a 
new political organism. 

But before the literary artist could freely breathe, 
it was doubtless necessary to break sharply with that 
traditional conception of man's nature and destiny 
which was indicated by Edwards's declaration that 
every child " is a viper, yea, far worse than a viper," 
or which consigns beforehand to eternal torture nine- 
tenths of the human race, including all infants unbap- 
tized. Such a doctrine of original sin is probably not 
held, certainly not confidently taught, in our day, by 
any enlightened body of religious men. 

And so we may now fairly regard William Ellery 
Channing, not as a storm center of sectarian strife, 
but simply as the most persuasive of many voices in 
a general and necessary intellectual movement. It 
was sorely against his own will that he ever became 
the leader of a sect ; and indeed his own theological 
creed would now give him a decidedly conservative 
position, even within that " orthodox " church from 
which he parted. 

The strenuous devotion of all energies and powers 
to what we believe to be duty is the very spirit of 
Puritanism, and it breathes in Channing, or Emerson, 
as in Vane or Edwards. The earlier and saner Puri- 
tanism, moreover, as Professor Jameson well reminds 
us, condemned nothing merely because it sweetened 
life. Its best artistic expression, Milton's poetry, 
opens the gates to the whole world of imagination, 
and the blitheness of " L' Allegro " and " Comus " 
offsets the more sober charm of " II Penseroso " or 



CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP 115 

"Samson Agonistes." It is no accident, therefore, 
that a famous essay of Channing is devoted to 
Milton, and another to the delights of literature in 
general. 

Channing, more than any other man of his time, 
revealed by precept and example the happiness of 
serene, all-sided self -culture. He demanded absolute 
fearlessness in study and thought. He emphasized 
the dignity, the joyousness, of each human life. All 
real life is, of course, for him, that of the spirit ; for 
Channing is as strenuous an idealist as Edwards 
himself. Nor is there anything selfish in his con- 
ception of duty. Indeed, his is one of the first and 
clearest voices raised against human slavery. In 
politics, in social life, Channing was an ardent and 
fearless reformer. Finally, to him, more than to 
any other man then living, the young Emerson 
stands in the position of a disciple. A surprisingly 
large number of our literary men have been in early 
life Unitarian clergymen. Perhaps the broad, humane 
scholarship of Channing has been best carried on in 
religious lines by James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888), 
while Frederic Henry Hedge (1805-1890) is now 
best remembered for his prominence in introducing 
German literature and philosophy. 

Our typical " fresh- water " college of to-day, Vv'ith Tiie old- 
its dozen fairly specialized scholarly instructors and ^^j}^^°^^^ 
a few thousand books, is modest enough, and yet it 
usually gives a most misleading and exaggerated idea 
as to the same institutions a century ago. Edwards 
hesitated to become president of Princeton, feeling 
" hardly competent to instruct the senior class in all 



116 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

studies." Two professors and two tutors made a 
tolerable faculty then. Hebrew, Greek and Latin 
mostly patristic, logic, mathematics, were the staples. 
Modern languages, science, history, have run the 
gauntlet into the curriculum since, and English 
literature is just coming painfully to its proper 
heritage. But worst of all, every American college 
in 1800 was but an ill-conducted school, where boys 
must recite the lessons conned from text-books. The 
George Harvard library seemed respectable to George Tick- 

1791-mi ^^^^ ^^ boyhood, but when he returned from Gottingen 
he found it was but '' a closetful of books." Of the 
larger university ether he and Everett brought us 
the first whiff. 

Ticknor himself, son of a well-to-do ex-teacher and 
tradesman of Boston, was admitted to Dartmouth 
College at ten, after oral tests, at home, in Cicero 
and New Testament Greek. Graduating at sixteen 
after but two years' actual residence, with a tincture 
of Horace and astronomy in his memory, he acquired 
in the next three years, from an English-born clergy- 
man of Boston, some real acquaintance with such 
recondite authors as Homer, Herodotus and Eu- 
ripides, Livy and Tacitus. Madame de Stael's 
" Germany " told him of university life there. With 
much effort he secured a German dictionary from 
another state, borrowed a German grammar written 
in French, and discovered in the suburban village of 
Jamaica Plain an Alsatian who could give him a very 
faulty pronunciation. Such were the conditions at 
Harvard and in Boston, a decade after the deaths of 
Friedrich von Schiller and Christian Gottlob Heyne. 
Mastery of Hottentot with the clicks, or the native 



CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP 117 

speech of Samoa, could be more hopefully sought in 
Boston now. 

Ticknor sailed for Europe in April, 1815. Four 
years later he pfeturned, with the richest intellectual 
results of study aud travel, and with a private library 
already large and costly. For many years he strug- 
gled, in vain, to have Harvard College remodeled on 
something like its present lines. His friend Edward 
Everett, alone, the brilliant young Greek professor, 
shared Ticknor's German scholarship and progressive 
ideas ; and he, after four years, was sent to Congress. 
Ticknor only, as the first Smith professor of modern 
languages (1820-1835), had a real departmental staff 
of instructors, a native German, an Italian, and a 
Frenchman. From his own nominal stipend of $1000 
he long drew only $600, on account of the extreme 
poverty of the college. 

Mr. Ticknor's town house and library was for a 
half -century, even during his own long visits abroad, 
the scholarly center of Boston (from which city Har- 
vard has never been separable), perhaps, also, its 
strongest social bulwark. Among his friends and 
correspondents he counted the greatest foreign schol- 
ars, like Humboldt, and King John of Saxony, the 
learned student of Dante. Ticknor himself was not 
a source of direct inspiration as a great teacher, ora- 
tor, or creative writer, but many such men valued his 
influence. He was a wide-ranging and accurate stu- 
dent all his life. His " History of Spanish Literature " 
(1849) is still the exhaustive and authoritative work 
on the subject, though anything but a readable or 
stimulating book for laymen. His " Life of Prescott " 
gives us a pleasant acquaintance with the biogra- 



118 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

pher as well, though both maintain their punctilious 
dignity and Bostonian manners. 

That Ticknor's tendencies, save in pure scholar- 
ship and educational reform, were conservative, aris- 
tocratic, exclusive, is not strange. He and his class 
were held closely bound by their material interests 
and social creed. The fast-growing wealth of Boston 
was heavily invested in the mills on the Merrimac. 
The South, rather than the West, then furnislied the 
chief market. Even men who deplored the existence 
of slavery — as nearly all men did — might cling to 
the Union, and to the constitutional recognition of 
slaveholding, as a bargain fairly entered into and 
irrevocable. 

So when the most promising of young Boston 
aristocrats, like Phillips, became an Abolitionist, 
or even a Free-Soil revolter from the dominant 
Whig party, like Sumner, Ticknor's door was 
slammed in his face, and nearly all " the four hun- 
dred," of course, imitated the example. When, from 
the days of Tiberius Gracchus to Henry George, has 
vested wealth welcomed revolutionary doctrines, or 
petted their expounders ? Far more bitterly did the 
older " orthodox " Unitarianism denounce the radi- 
cal free religionist, Theodore Parker, as " an atheist 
in the pulpit," a fit ally for incendiary traitors like 
Garrison. Professor Wendell is quite right in argu- 
ing that all this was not merely excusable or rational, 
but really inevitable. Though " Humanity sweeps 
onward," the cautious conservative has his peculiar 
virtues and uses. 

It is important to remember that Emerson and the 
younger creative writers generally were openly fol- 



CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP 119 

lowing, though with feet less heavily shod, in the 
same paths with Garrison and Parker. Channing 
himself did not live long enough to grow the hard 
shell of real conservatism. On the other hand, such 
men as Felton, the great Greek professor, an old and 
intimate friend of Sumner, denounced his radical 
politics, and finally even broke off personal relations, 
far more hotly than Ticknor. The latter acted from 
calm, lifelong principle. That his own political social 
and religious creed was absolutely right, he knew as 
surely as Winthrop or Mather. 

In truth, not merely the conservatism of property Conserva- 
generally, but the very spirit of scholarship itself, is ^^^^^^l jjj 
often at war with the creative imagination. The 
scholar lives, by his own choice, in the past ; the poet 
rather in his ideal, even if unattainable, future. 
So the scholar craves permanence, while the freer 
vision of the dreamer bids him hope, if not fight, for 
radically better conditions of life. 

These two powers are oftener not united, in large 
measure, in the same person. Encyclopaedic learn- 
ing weighs down the winged soul too heavily. Books 
abused, says Emerson, are among the worst of things. 
" Meek young men in libraries " forget, he adds, that 
the}^ to whom they make submission were themselves 
but bolder and more self-centered youths. William 
D. Whitney or Justin Winsor could have made a 
crushing retort, by describing the chronic inaccuracy 
of dreamers. Certainly Emerson himself was quite 
unfit for sustained investigation and scholarly accu- 
racy, though he could admire, in more tolerant 
moods, even the bookworm. 

Lowell, it is true, did combine tireless energy as a 



120 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

reader, an omnivorous memory, and reflective analyt- 
ical- criticism, with the poet's imagination. Doubt- 
less the critic profited by the partnership, but the 
poet often, even in old age, complains bitterly that 
ardu.ous study has dried up the creative sources. His 
poetry might have been largely tlie gainer, if he, like 
Longfellow, could have quietly sought, and enjoj^ed, 
whatever sustenance his imagination craved, or even 
had he been often secluded for years in village or 
fields, with little comradeship save his own wide- 
ranging thoughts. 

But the poet and the scholar, creator and preserver 
of our literary wealth, have need of each other ; and 
the truly civilized community itself needs alike the 
poet and the scholar, the uplift toward better things to 
strive for, the full consciousness of all the treasured 
experience and thought garnered from the centuries 
since Homer or the Vedic hymns. 

Ticknor first made liberal scholarship possible in an 
American college. In later life he lent his costly 
books, with utmost liberality, to every serious stu- 
dent. He, more than any other man, labored to 
found the Free Public Library of Boston, the oldest 
and the best of its kind. To that library he be- 
queathed his own collection of Spanish books, said to 
be still the richest in the world, outside of Spain 
itself. 

Ticknor's name must be written, perhaps larger 
than any other, among the creators of a wide and 
deep literary culture, who are surely, in the long 
run, among the godfathers of later literature as well. 
This truth is indeed demonstrable in his case. Em- 
erson or Thoreau, though each owes much in detail 



CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP 121 

to older authors, could indeed be essentially himself 
in his sylvan home. But Longfellow's world-wide 
humanism and Prescott's fine literary style were 
vitally indebted to George Ticknor, and to the new 
culture which his name best represents. They 
breathed naturally, all their lives, the air of the 
"alcoved tomb," as Dr. Holmes calls the library. 
These two are but the most famous among Ticknor's 
many friends. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Channing's works are published in a single portly volume by 
the American Unitarian Association in Boston. 

"Life" by William H. Channing, Boston, 1848. 

Ticknor's " History of Spanish Literature," three volumes, 
New York, 1849. "Life, Letters, and Journals," edited by his 
daughter, two volumes, Boston, 1876. 

The remark of Professor J. F. Jameson alluded to on 
p. 114 is in his excellent monograph on " Historical Writing 
in America." 

SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASS WORK 

The best sketches of Ticknor's Boston will be found in 
Pierce's " Life of Charles Sumner," Vol. II, and, especially. Vol. 
Ill, ad init. If the attempt is made to interest young students 
in such a subject, a limited use of names, and a generous use of 
views, portraits, anecdotes, etc., is desirable. 

The social dictation, and, if need were, ostracism, exercised 
by Ticknor, is defended in a characteristic letter of his, in 
Pierce's " Sumner," Vol. III. The serene self-confidence of its 
moral judgments makes this epistle a capital index of Puritanic 
character. 



CHAPTER I 
THE CONCORD GROUP 

I. Emerson 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON traced his descent 
through seven generations of Puritan preachers. 
He had every right to a place, then, in that "Brahmin 
caste," the intellectual aristocracy of New England 
as it is characterized by Dr. Holmes. His father 
preached in the oldest of the Boston churches down 
to his early death in 1811. He too, like nearly all 
the educated men of his generation, shared in the 
liberal tendencies which Channing best represents. 
There was very little controversial theology in his 
sermons, and in general he foreshadowed the ten- 
dencies of his greater son. He edited from 1805 till 
his death the Literary Anthology^ then the modest 
organ of literary and liberal Boston ; for the North 
American Review was not founded until 1815. 

Those who believe in the decisive power of heredity, 
or of personal influence either, should read a most 
striking utterance of ecstatic idealism, written by 
Mary Moody Emerson, when her famous nephew was 
four years old. It is quoted by Mr. Emerson in the 
Atlantic for December, 1883, and certainly could 
well stand as a page of his own " Nature." Even the 
rhythmic pulse of his prose is here: "We measure 
duration by the number of our thoughts, by the 

122 



Harvard. 



THE CONCORD GROUP 123 

activity of reason, the discovery of truths, the ac- 
quirement of virtue, the approval of God." 

Poverty was among Emerson's earliest teachers. 
His father's death left a delicate widow with five 
little boys, — Ralph Waldo being the second, — and 
hardly any income. She moved out of the parson- 
age, and took boarders. The boy Emerson used to 
drive their cow to pasture on the Common : a lively 
glimpse of the changes in that part of Boston. For 
many years the family were quietly aided by the 
dead father's friends. 

Emerson was educated at the Latin School, and Emerson at 
graduated at Harvard in 1821. He made no great 
record of scholarship there, and though chosen class 
poet, it was after seven others had declined the 
honor. Nor does he express enthusiasm for any of 
his instructors, as such, though before he graduated 
Edward Everett was teaching Greek, and George 
Ticknor, first of the three famous Smith professors, 
had charge of the modern languages. These men 
had brought back from Europe something of the true 
university spirit. The chair of rhetoric and oratory 
was already filled by Edward Tyrrel Channing, 
brother of the great preacher, who in his long service 
(1819-1851) is said to have " taught a whole gen- 
eration of American authors how to write." His 
tasks Emerson performed with interest. Doubtless 
the youthful Emerson was himself the stripling who, 
as he writes long after, would console his defeats in 
mathematics "with Chaucer and Montaigne, with 
Plutarch and Plato, at night." Shakespeare he knew 
almost by heart. Webster's oratory set his pulses 
throbbing. German philosophy and literature were 



124 THE NEW ENGLAND PEiUOD 

coming into the reach of eager minds, but did not 
interest Emerson especially until he met Carlyle. 
Such natures as his find their own fittest sustenance 
in spite of all teachers or curricula. Already he was 
notably quiet, self-contained, dwelling apart. 

In college Emerson had taken scholarships, and 
earned money by private pupils. Later he alter- 
nated with his studies in Divinity some unhappy but 
successful school-teaching. A keen-eyed boy later 
recalled him as " a captive philosopher set to tending 
flocks, resigned but not amused." 

At this time he was aiding unselfishly in bringing 
up his brothers. All were of sensitive constitutions. 
The winter of 1827-1828 Waldo was obliged to spend 
in St. Augustine. Here as elsewhere he kept jour- 
nals of his sights, studies, and meditations, not rarely 
in verse. His correspondence with his Aunt Mary 
was a part of his education. 

In 1829 he was ordained as assistant pastor in a 
Boston church, and married. Early in 1832 he lost 
his wife, and later in the year retired from the min- 
istry. His final sermon is the only one that has 
been published, the other rather mild discourses not 
being, in his opinion, worth preservation ; and hav- 
ing been freely utilized, we may add, in his lectures 
and printed essays. 

It would not be easy to find a calmer, or a more 
audacious, utterance than this last sermon. It dis- 
cusses the rite which all shades of Christians have 
through the centuries held most sacred : the com- 
munion. His own belief was, that the command, 
"This do in remembrance of me," was addressed to 
the apostles actually present, and to them alone. 



THE CONCORD GROUP 125 

He liad proposed to his people a substitute, which 

had been unanimously rejected. He could not hon- Emerson 

estly continue the service. His final words were : gl^g^^ij^g^*" 

''That is the end of my opposition, that I am not Christian 

interested in it. I am content that it stand to the ^^ ' 

end of the world, if it please men and please Heaven, 

and I shall rejoice in all the good it produces." 

For Emerson, that was always the end. When- 
ever he felt "cabin'd, cribb'd, confined," he opened 
the door and stepped out. His needs were of the 
simplest, and he never doubted that they would be 
supplied. Absolute sincerity and single-hearted 
quest of truth were the first of needs. Such hon- 
esty in word and act 

" He taught, but first he folwed it himselve." 

At thirty, lie faced without dismay what seemed 
total failure in tlie only work for Avhich he had felt 
any calling or capacity. Doubly bereft of pulpit and 
helpmeet, he must have felt the need of restful 
change. 

In 1833-1834 Emerson made a first visit in Europe, 
chiefly in England, with a short tour through Sicily, 
Italy, and France. He met the men he had most 
desired to see, Wordsworth, Landor, De Quincey, 
Coleridge, and in particular Carlyle. The student 
should turn at once to the opening chapter of " Eng- 
lish Traits," which is, be it said, incidentally, quite 
the easiest of all his books for the exoteric reader. 
The merciless description of Wordswortli is a reve- 
lation of critical insight in the younger seer. 

The friendship with the choleric Carlyle was a ^^^^^^ 
rather grotesque one, but lasted till death. It Emerson. 



126 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

hardly needs Lowell's vigorous words, in " Fable for 
Critics," to differentiate the two men. Their method 
and spirit, at least, were as diverse as the wind 
and the sun of ^sop, inducing the wayfarer to 
throw off his cloak. Carlyle hated and denounced 
shams. Emerson loved and serenely sought the 
beautiful and the true. If the Scotchman had 
accepted a later invitation to come over and con- 
duct the Biol — Their long correspondence has 
been carefully edited by Professor Norton. 

Emerson preached in Edinburgh, doubtless else- 
where, during his absence. Until 1838 he even 
preached regularly in East Lexington to " a very 
simple people who could understand no one else," 
but he refused their formal call. He said early, " My 
pulpit is the Lyceum platform." 

This " Yankee notion," the New England Lyceum, 
is now little but a memory of ante-bellum days. 
The lack of books, magazines, and live newspapers 
fostered a hunger such as we can no longer realize. 
Like everything else, the Puritan lecture-course sys- 
tem was taken very seriously. These winter courses 
were regarded as an essential part of a liberal educa- 
tion. The lecturer was preacher, teacher, political 
and social leader, in one. Emerson, a pioneer in this 
field, lectured in 1834 on Michael Angelo, Milton, 
Luther, George Fox, and Burke. 

The leading Lyceum speakers of the next thirty 
years were also usually the chief scholars, authors, and 
orators of the East. Naturally, the platform early 
became an engine of strenuous " reform " of many 
sorts, and it is only our word " crank " that is new, not 
the genus. Just before the war. Abolitionism domi- 



THE CONCORD GROUP 127 

nated the Lyceum. Later, a more sated or less robust 
generation began to require amusement, and finally 
the professional fun-maker wrecked the dignity 
of the institution. Yet every New Englander now 
past middle age counts even a far-away memory of 
Emerson the lecturer, and his successors, down to 
Whipple and Curtis, among the chief sources of 
lasting inspiration. 

The same year, 1834, Emerson settled in Concord, 
sharing the Old Manse with his grandmother's hus- 
band, the venerable Dr. Ezra Ripley, who was EzraKipiey, 
perhaps the last immovable pillar of the old Puritan- 
ism. Emerson's loving sketch of him (^Atlantic, 
November, 1883) aoes equal honor to both. 

Concord was Emerson's home until his death. 
There Hawthorne, Thoreau, the Alcotts, and others 
lived, and now lie buried ; but as the home of Emerson 
Concord will be known above all else. No spot 
could be more satisfying to the pilgrim, whatever 
his previous fancies about it. Peace seems to linger 
about its famous homes, and surely about the beauti- 
ful " God's acre " in Sleepy Hollow. The memories 
of two centuries are best united, however, where 
we look across the swift quiet river to see, at the 
bridge head, the monument of the first fight in the 
Revolution, inscribed with Emerson's most famous 
quatrain. 

The palmers began to come to the sage's door, by 
the way, abundantly, even in Emerson's own time. 
Hawthorne sketches this procession of "young vision- Concord the 
aries and gray-headed theorists " in that wonderful J^gamers 
piece of idealized realism, the description of Concord 
and the Manse at the beginning of his "Mosses," 



128 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

to which the student should by all means turn at 
once. 

The year 1835 was still more decisive in the phi- 
losopher's outward life. He married Lydia Jackson 
of Plymouth. They moved into the house in which 
their children were born, in which both parents died, 
and which is still the abode of the purest refinement 
and altruism. 

The same month he gave the oration at the 200th 
anniversary of the town's settlement. This address, 
as published, is a sober, plain statement of facts, 
with abundant footnotes, such as a local anti- 
quarian puts together. Emerson could be, and 
was at will, to the end of his days, a plain, shrewd 
village neighbor, a regular attendant at town meet- 
ing, as full of unmystical " common sense " as Frank- 
lin himself, to whom, indeed, he is likened often by 
those who knew him best. 

For April 19 of the next year he rendered a 
more famous local service. His hymn, sung at the 
dedication of the monument, made such an impres- 
sion, that it almost seemed that it was he who had 

" Fired the shot heard round the world." 

Here again there was no hint of mysticism. 

And yet his first book, " Nature," had already been 
written in the Old Manse. Published anonymously, 
it was promptly credited to Emerson. It sold, in 
twelve years, only five hundred copies. The soul of 
the poet and seer is in the little book. Nearly all 
his later utterances are there suggested, as when the 
phrase, " Nothing is quite beautiful alone," fore- 
shadows one of his most perfect lyric poems, " Each 



THE CONCORD GROUP 129 

and All." The book is a poetic rhapsody, more poet- 
ical by far as a whole, even though not written in 
verse, than Wordsworth's "Excursion." "Nature" 
is, to Emerson, the whole environment of man, and 
the central thought of this work is the perfect har- 
mony that should be felt between the human being 
and that environment. 

Curiously enough, Emerson does not seem to be 
aware that the word Nature itself, by its origin and 
by Lu,3retius's use of it, means properly birth, or 
origin, so implying in itself development. Yet, long 
before Darwin, in the next edition of this book after 
the lirst, there are prefixed the famous verses, fore- 
shadowing so clearly the chief dogma of modern 
science : — 

" A chain of countless rings 
The next unto the farthest brings ; . . . 
And striving to be man, the worm 
Mounts through all the spires of form." 

The little book puzzled, and in part shocked, most of 
the few critics wdio then noticed it. It can hardly 
be defended from the rather vague charge of Panthe- 
ism. Nature certainly is, to Emerson, not a veil 
between himself and God, but the manifold expres- 
sion, or emanation, of divinity itself. 

The clear final note is optimistic. Man is sufficient 
to his own salvation. Progress, and nothing else, is 
necessary to ever fuller human happiness. Evil is 
but misdirected good. " The advancing spirit . . . 
shall draw beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise dis- 
course, and heroic acts, around its way, until evil is 
no more seen." 

Even if the reader is able to share in full Emerson's 



130 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

complete emancipation from religious tradition and 
dogma of every sort, he may still find this alluring 
little book anything but easy reading. Like the 
forest itself, it often seems to open unending viatas 
and bypaths, rather than to close in and complete any 
view. Indeed, the subject itself is as boundless as 
interstellar space. But every man must at least find 
much truth, beauty, and inspiration, in golden 
phrases scattered over every page, while a fitting 
hour and mood may, at any time, give us the key to 
the entire rhapsody, so that we can exultantly cry, 
in Emerson's own words: — 

'' Beauty into my senses stole : 
I yielded myself to the perfect whole." 

The most striking public appearance of Emerson 
was before the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa society in 
1837, when he delivered an oration on " The American 
Scholar." This bears by general consent the title of 
our intellectual Declaration of Independence. Lowell, 
who was present, recalls the scene vividly in his essay 
on Thoreau. Next year Mr. Emerson aroused much 
feeling by his radical Divinity School address, in 
which he emphasized the purely human nature of 
Christ, and the absurdity of a miracle, if understood 
as an actual violation of natural law. 

In the resulting discussion he made this remark, in 
a letter to his former colleague, the Rev. Dr. V/are : 
" I do not know what arguments are. I delight in 
telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare 
say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of 
mortal men." This is absolutely true. There are 
few links of argument in Emerson's works. He has 



THE CONCORD GROUP 131 

tlie spirit of a poet always. What interests him he 
sees clearly, and describes vividly; that is all. 
Hence he has founded no school of thought, taught 
no doctrines ; but more than any other man of the 
nineteenth century he stimulated and encouraged 
all Americans to unfettered thought and fearless 
utterance. Lowell, who least of men would wear 
any master's yoke, pays most loyal tribute to this 
benignant influence in "Emerson the Lecturer." 

Yet Emerson has been regarded, in spite of himself, 
as the leader, or center, of the Transcendental school. 
That name was given in derision, doubtless, though 
it would be hard to say when, or where. Lowell, in 
the opening pages of his essay on Thoreau, gives a 
mercilessly witty and satirical description of this 
famous group. Emerson himself, in his "Historic 
Notes," makes a very different sketch. They were 
simply a coterie of the most advanced radicals, in an 
age of general ferment. The " Club " began in a The Tran- 
chance gathering of four or five young Unitarian scemiental^ 
clergymen, and never acquired any organization at i836. 
all. Goethe, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Channing, 
Emerson himself, were among the disturbing 
influences. " I unsettle all things," says Emerson. 
"No facts are to me sacred; none are profane." 
Everything was open for freest discussion. Visionary 
schemes for the complete and immediate regeneration 
of society were, naturall}^ in the air. 

The most famous experiment actually made was 
that in cooperative farming, joint housekeeping, 
rational education, and mutual improvement, at 
Brook Farm, in Roxbury, in the years 1840-1847. ^^^^^ 
There will be more to say of this in connection with 1840-1847. 



1841-1844. 



132 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

Hawthorne. Emerson's shrewd Yankee sense, and 
doubtless too, his happy home life in Concord, kept 
him entirely aloof financially from this project. It 
ended disastrously at last, partly on account of the 
loss of the chief building by fire, but without scan- 
dal of any kind. Many of the younger members 
always looked back upon it as an ideal form of 
education. 
The Dial, During the same years in part (1841-1844), the 

famous Dial, in some sort the organ of the Tran- 
scendentalists, was edited by Margaret Fuller, and 
afterward by Emerson. His prose and poetry are 
its most valuable contents. This also failed to sup- 
port itself. A remarkably lucid grouping of its 
chief contributors and contents is given by Professor 
Wendell (pp. 302-304). 

Emerson had lost, in 1834 and 1836, two of his 
brothers, who shared his genius in large measure. 
But the heaviest shock his self-centered optimistic 
faith received was the sudden death, in 1842, of his 
son and eldest child, Waldo, really a marvelous bo}^, 
in his sixth year. The poem " Threnody " is a most 
tender, pathetic, and intimate utterance. We feel 
the heart-throbs as in no other of his verses. The 
fact that such an utterance was actually in rhyme 
strengthens our belief that Emerson was at heart a 
poet, lacking only, as he says of Plato, the lyric 
form, if even that. 

In 1847-1849 he was again in England, and had 
great success as a lecturer, chiefly with a series of 
papers afterward published as *' Representative Men." 
In this book he comes nearest to full sympathy with 
the author of " Heroes and Hero Worship " ; but while 



THE CONCORD GROUP 133 

Carlyle glories in the force of a great man for it- 
self, Emerson always seeks the eternal Idea behind 
all. 

With the exception of this English visit, Emerson's 
life glided on uneventfully. He lived simply, earned 
more than he spent, and was at ease. He lectured 
every winter, and from time to time put forth a vol- 
ume of essays, though by no means all his manuscripts 
have ever been printed. In Concord itself he gave 
first and last more than a hundred lectures, many of 
which are still unpublished. His poems accumulated 
much more slowly, and the two collections make but 
a single light volume in the final editions of his works. 

He was not accounted a man of action, especially 
not a political agitator nor urger of immediate re- 
forms. Thus he held somewhat aloof from the anti- 
slavery propaganda, though he expressed sympathy 
for Sumner when he was assailed, and for John 
Brown in 1859. He had borne testimony against 
slavery itself, in remarkably plain and forcible hm- 
guage, in an address on emancipation in the West 
Indies as early as 1844. He condemned the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law. His single sentence in a frustrated 
speech on Daniel Webster is as fierce as Whittier's 
"Ichabod": "There is not a drop of blood in this 
man's veins which does not look downward." In 
1855, he made the proposal, in an antislavery speech, 
that all the slaves be purchased, at an estimated cost 
of two billion dollars. Most men will now agree 
that it was a rational and economical plan. In the 
same year he spoke once for the right of women to 
vote. 

" English Traits " was not published until 1856. 



134 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

Despite much hearty admiration, the keen, unbarbed 
arrows of this book struck deep into the nerves 
of our insular cousins. The passage beginning 
*' Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings" is 
terrific in its plainness. In this one venture he may 
be compared with Hawthorne, whose book, " Our Old 
Home," hit much the same tender spot. 

Even the Civil War hardly distracted Emerson 
from his wonted tasks. He welcomed the Emanci- 
pation Proclamation. Again, when Lincoln died, he 
spoke wisely and generously of his character, to his 
Concord neighbors, April 19, 1865. His poem, 
*' Voluiitaries " (1863), reveals that it is written in 
war time. Perhaps, as we saw in Bryant's case, that 
bitter stress gave us the poet's noblest quatrain : — 

" So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
So near is God to man, 
When Duty whispers low, Thou must, 
The youth repUes, I can." 

The verses, "Terminus," in 1867, announce serenely 
the approach of age. Lowell, years after, feeling 
himself too growing old, and uttering his loyal 
gratitude for lifelong inspiration, quoted most grace- 
fully to Emerson : " I at least gladly 

" ' Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime.* " 

Indeed, such quatrains as that just cited, and the 
famous one in " Wood Notes," beginning, — 
" Thou canst not wave thy staff in air," 

may well make us hesitate to agree with Mr. Lowell, 
that the master had no ear for rhythm and music 
in verse, and produced his occasional happy effects 
almost by chance. 



THE CONCORD GROUP 135 

Emerson's memory and power of utterance faded 
painlessly away in his latter years. Though present 
at Longfellow's funeral, where he whispered once to 
his devoted attendant, "Who is the sleeper?" he 
awoke as from a trance at nightfall, sadly aware that 
he had missed the day. Soon after he contracted 
pneumonia, and only a month later he himself fell on 
sleep. 

It has been attempted to make clear the spirit of 
Emerson's work, even while telling the quiet story of 
his life. The gentle simplicity of the man, his un- 
swerving faith in humanity, in Nature, in the unseen 
Powers that guide the universe, must count for more 
than any mere piece of literary art he has left beliind 
him. He certainly created no philosophic system, 
perhaps taught no absolutely novel truth. He had 
literally no dramatic power, or large constructive 
imagination. His utterance is always direct and 
personal, as it were in his own calm, natural voice. 

His essays are not only without rigid logical 
cohesion, they are often mere loose series of more or 
less kindred thoughts, and at times justify the ex- 
travagant legends which are current as to their hap- 
hazard growth. He has no painful or scholastic 
accuracy. He quotes or refers offhand to authors of 
all ages, with some of whom he had but nodding 
acquaintance. Least of all men would he desire his 
own books to be studied critically and accepted as 
authoritative. 

On his artistic side, then, he is lyric only, and 
even that, almost always, in briefest flights. As his 
rhythmic prose hardly suffers when quoted in the 



136 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

single detached sentence, or by the paragraph at most, 
so his verse rarely sustains itself masterfully beyond 
a dozen lines. A few striking exceptions, indeed, to 
this assertion, like " Each and All" and *' Terminus," 
have been noted. Emerson's own favorite among 
his poems was "Days." It chances that we can set 
beside this the same thought in its earlier prose ex- 
pression. The two will convince any appreciative 
reader of his full right to use the poetic forms. 

" The days are ever divine, as to the first Aryans. They come 
and go like muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant 
friendly party ; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the 
gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away." 

— Works and Days. 

DAYS 

" Daughters of Time, the hypocritic days. 
Muffled and dumb, like barefoot dervishes. 
And marching single in an endless file. 
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. 
To each they offer gifts after his will. 
Bread, kingdom, stars, and sky that holds them all. 
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, 
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily 
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day 
Turned and departed silent. I too late 
Under the solemn fillet saw the scorn." 

As Dr. Holmes points out, here and elsewhere Mr. 
Emerson is far more subjective in verse than in 
prose. Indeed, he frankly confesses his own feelings 
and failings in his poetry, while he has a certain 
aristocratic reticence about himself at all other 
times. 

Emerson's verse is usually as cold as Bryant's, and 
far below his, not to mention Poe's, in metrical and 



THE CONCORD GROUP 137 

structural finish. On the other hand, in actual range 
of thought, and even of fancy, he is altogether 
superior to them both. Indeed, a certain demiurgic 
originality and audacious independence of all tra- 
ditional models has placed Emerson's poetry, in the 
judgment of many critics, quite apart from that of 
all other men. 

But the true legacy of Ralph Waldo Emerson is in 
the freer, purer air that all men breathe who have 
come within his influence. Dean Stanley reported 
that in America " the genial atmosphere which Emer- 
son has done so much to promote is shared by all the 
churches equally." The good dean spoke then for 
the ''Evangelical" bodies ; but freedom is wider still. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The works of Emerson are published by Houghton, Mifflin, 
& Co. The three most important memoirs are the official 
biography by his literary executor, J. E. Cabot, the volume of 
reminiscences by his son, Edward Waldo Emerson, and 
the Life in "American Men of Letters" by Dr. Holmes. 
Of critical writing on Emerson there is no end. We should 
begin with Lowell's loyal tribute. Matthew Arnold's paper on 
Emerson is important, and there is an excellent German study 
of him by Hermann Grimm. The latest and most iconoclastic 
essay is by J. J. Chapman. The best technical criticism of his 
literary style is in Dr. Holmes's book. Mr. Cabot has, in an im- 
portant appendix, a list of all Emerson's works, with abstracts 
of those not published. 

CLASSROOM WORK 

A number of Emerson's poems are easier reading than any 
of his prose. Besides those mentioned in the text, most of 
"The Problem," of "Wood Notes I," and of "Mayday" can be 
simply enjoyed. Many brief poems, like " Rhodora," " Suum 
Cuique," "Compensation," "Forbearance," should be learned 



138 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

by heart. " Forerunners " should be compared with Whittier's 
"Vanishers" and Lowell's "Envoi to the Muse." The ap- 
proach to Emerson's prose is not wholly easy. " Manners " and 
" Wealth," in " Conduct of Life," are clear enough. Perhaps a 
fully characteristic paper, like " Compensation," is really better, 
even for a first plunge. Abundant pictures for an illustrated 
lecture on Concord are very easily obtainable. 

II. Henry D. Thoreau 

There are certain other men and women so associ- 
ated with Mr. Emerson that they are almost always 
mentioned as his disciples, though they are rather 
members, with him, of a local Concord group. Of 
course every such individual, if worth discussing at 
all, is interesting chiefly for his originality, not for his 
loyalty to Emerson. In particular is this true of 
the comparatively brief, but sturdily contented, life 
of Thoreau. He was unduly overshadowed in life 
by his great friend's fame; and Mr. Lowell, in 
particular, always strong in his dislikes, and always 
vigorous and convincing in utterance, said some most 
unfair things about him. 

Though French on one side and Quaker on the 
other, Thoreau himself was a stubborn, opinionated, 
native-born Yankee. A near neighbor of the Em- 
ersons, he had doubtless driven his mother's cow 
home by their gate. Though his native Con- 
cord was then but a village of two thousand souls, 
— since doubled in number, — it had a good class- 
ical academy, and the boy was well fitted for 
Harvard, where he graduated in 1837, having 
worked his way in part by teaching. That same 
year Mr. Emerson sought his friendship, being first 
drawn to the youth because he had heard of a striking 



THE CONCORD GROUP 139 

coincidence between a passage in Thoreau's diary and 
his own last lecture. For two years, 1841-1843, he 
lived under Mr. Emerson's roof. He never married. 

Besides teaching, lecturing, and authorship, Tho- 
reau worked industriously and skillfully, at times, 
at the family employment of making lead pencils. 
How small his own actual needs and outgo were 
he has told us plainly in his favorite book, 
"Walden." His famous hut on the shore of the 
lake was upon Emerson's land. He built it in the 
spring of 1845 and used it only two years. It was 
simply an outdoor study, where he lived among 
woodland sights and sounds, while writing his 
books. There was no pretense of being a hermit. An unsocial 
His friends — the poet Channing, Alcott, and others ^^^^^^^^^""^ 
— visited him there freely, and he walked in to the 
village almost daily. This particular episode has 
been absurdly exaggerated in some accounts of 
Thoreau's life. 

Nevertheless it is true, that he had a rather un- 
social nature. He went to "the god of the woods" 
not merely, like Emerson, to fetch his words to men, 
but because he decidedly preferred solitude to society, 
for the most part. Social conventions, artificial needs, 
were to him a weary waste of precious time. It is 
also true that he was more deeply influenced by 
Emerson than by any other one man. But the very 
precepts of the master united with Thoreau's own 
instincts to make him the most independent and self- 
poised of mortals. Emerson had actually written 
in 1841 advocating a " house of one room " : though 
his own was ampler. 

Moreover, while much wider in his range of 



140 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

thoughts, or at least of speculations, Emerson was 
altogether the pupil, not the master, in Thoreau's 
proper classroom, the woods and lields. " Thoreau,'' 
as Dr. Holmes finely says, " lent him a new set of 
organs of sense, of wonderful delicacy. Emerson's 
long intimacy with him taught him to give an out- 
line to many natural objects which would have been 
poetic nebulae to him, but for this companionship." 
Compare Emerson's own testimony in his brief 
biography of his friend. " Mayday," again, writ- 
ten after Thoreau's influence came, has a definite- 
ness of vision not felt in *' Wood Notes," which was 
actually written before they met, though nearly all 

readers feel that the 

" forest seer, 
The minstrel of the natural year," 

must be a portrait of Thoreau. 

The younger philosopher was also, as Emerson was 
not, a devoted classical student, especially of Greek 
drama and lyric . He made translations of two ^schy 1- 
ean plays, and of passages from Pindar. Many evi- 
dences of this rare scholarship appear in his works. 

Thoreau's life at Walden may perhaps most fairly 
be regarded as a Brook Farm experiment in miniature : 
a half-successful attempt, or an interesting failure of 
an attempt, to create a congenial self-supporting 
"social unit," not unduly isolated from mankind in 
general, and more than willing to impart to outsiders 
any fruitful results from the undertaking. Thoreau's 
ideal community was : himself alone. The attempt 
had, at any rate, no such semitragical absurdity as 
Alcott's, from which he and his few disciples were 
rescued in a starving condition. 



THE CONCORD GROUP 141 

It is curious that Emerson apparently failed to 
realize, adequately, how exactly in accord with his 
own teachings all this sturdy contented activity of 
Thoreau's was. How permanent and precious its 
fruits were to be he perhaps could not be expected 
to divine. He is said to have complained that 
" Henry " had no ambition. 

His whole life through Thoreau jotted down in his 
journals — not indeed many visions and aspirations 
for the Infinite, but — a record of sights and sounds 
in his own familiar yet undiscovered New England 
world. He lived on such terms with his neighbors Friend of 
that he could lift the fish from the lake, the wood- ^^^ *^® 

f or6St "World 

chuck from his hole, with his hand, and restore 
them unterrified to freedom again. When he left 
the woods and lakes of his own region, it was by 
choice for the forests of Maine, or the sandy stretches 
of Cape Cod. Nearly all his published works, and 
there are now some ten volumes, are but sections of that 
detailed daily record. Only two books were printed 
in his lifetime. The first one, in 1849, involved him 
in serious debt, and nearly the whole edition came 
back upon his hands some years later. It probably 
never occurred to him to be thereby dismayed, or 
diverted from his natural employments. 

And now, alone of Emerson's personal group, 
Thoreau is every year becoming more widely known 
and beloved. He may be said, also, to have a long 
line of disciples, from John Burroughs down to the 
youth of to-day, who has learned first from him, 
as Colonel Higginson says he did, to bring a bird 
nearer with a spyglass instead of with a gun. He 
alone has taken an honored place beside, yet apart 



142 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

from, Emerson himself, among the authors whom 
the world cannot now spare, and apparently will 
not soon suffer to be forgotten. Indeed, if we take 
but ten books to our summer camp, " Walden " is 
more secure of a place than Emerson's "Nature" 
itself. There is furthermore a goodly group of liv- 
ing writers, still headed by genial and happy John 
Burroughs, and occupying toward Thoreau the posi- 
tion of independent but grateful disciples. Even 
Lowell does homage to his keen and unerring outdoor 
eyesight. 
Thoreau the Thoreau wrote his poetry almost wholly before he 
oS^of-doors ^^^ thirty. It is embedded, usually in the form of 
School. mere couplets or quatrains, in his voluminous journals, 

as we may see occasionally in the " Concord and 
Merrimac." Much of it he later destroyed, on Mr. 
Emerson's judgment rather than his own. Together 
with the philosopher's inability to approve or read 
his neighbor Hawthorne's masterpieces, this casts 
grave doubts on Emerson's infallibility in literary 
criticism at short range. 

A separate volume of fifty short " Poems of Nature " 
has recently been put together. The title is apt, but 
still wiser the editors' instinct, not to try to detach 
the yet briefer bits from their prose environment in 
his journals. Thoreau simply turns to rhythmical 
utterance, for the instant, when the tone of his 
thought requires it. Like Emerson, he is often 
more confidential and personal in verse. Occasion- 
ally he is mystical, though usually direct enough. 
Rhyme he cannot always command easily, though 
we welcome eagerly such gems as : — 



THE CONCORD GROUP 143 

"I hearing get, who had but ears, 
And sight, who had but eyes before, 

I moments live who lived but years, 
And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore." 

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers coyly still. 
Truth-seekers are we all. Contentment with little, 
devotion to simple living and high-ranging thought, 
comradeship with all animate things, deep insight 
into the eternal processes of nature, together with 
full enjoyment of philosophy and poetry in books, — 
so much, at least, this Yankee recluse learned, and 
teaches to an ever widening circle. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The goodly row of Thoreau's books is published by Houghton. 
A remarkably fine edition of " Cape Cod " contains hundreds of 
delicately tinted marginal sketches, reproduced from the water- 
color work of a faithful follower. The separate volume, " Poems 
of Nature," is hardly indispensable, since his verse is best under- 
stood as read in situ in his other books. 

Frank Sanborn calls Channing's "Life of Thoreau" "a 
mine " of things " relevant and irrelevant " : and his own, in 
"Men of Letters," could be called "Concord gossip, often 
mentioning Thoreau." Still, he is always interesting. Emer- 
son's brief sketch of Thoreau, now included in the latter's col- 
lected works, Vol. X, sets him unmistakably before us. Lowell's 
essay is indispensable, but exasperating. See also appreciations 
by R. L. Stevenson, Burroughs, and Page. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASS WORK 

No books can be put more securely into young hands than 
Thoreau's. Like Bryant, he should be read out of doors. He 
is intensely local also, and a pilgrimage to Concord, with views 
of its quieter nooks, will bring him constantly to the lips. 
Walden Pond, in particular, is forever his. 



144 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



III. Margaret Fuller 

Strangely contrasted with Thoreau's posthumous 
fame is the fact, that her own tragic death, and the 
discussion over a character in a romance, now barely 
keep alive in the popular mind the very name of 
Margaret Fuller, the imperious friend of Emerson, 
the editor, perhaps the real founder, of the Dial^ the 
best-loved and best-hated woman of her day. She 
was born in Cambridge, of a self-assertive race, her- 
self the most self-confident and ardently ambitious of 
women. Her father himself started her in the pre- 
cocious classical training then common for boys, 
unheard-of for girls. Latin, begun at six, recited in 
irregular evening hours, wrecked her bodily vigor 
for life, as she afterward believed. French, philos- 
ophy, Greek, Italian, were on her daily programme 
at midsummer, when she was fifteen. German lit- 
erature and philosophy came very early and power- 
fully into her inner life, through her friendship with 
Dr. Frederick Hedge. Her father removed to 
Groton in 1833, and died suddenly in 1835. 

Margaret's struggle to educate the younger chil- 
dren was now doubly severe. She had to leave home 
and teach, first in Alcott's famous Boston school, 
and, after his first mishap, in Providence. Hedge 
praised her to the Emersons, and in July, 1836, she 
made her first visit in their Concord home, recorded 
by Emerson in a famous passage. She was at first " a 
not unf eared, half- welcome guest." He learned to 
value highly his ardent and critical friend. A bold 
and delightful letter to him is quoted by her chiv- 
alric biographer. Colonel Higginson (pp. 70-71). 



THE CONCORD GROUP 145 

Such a woman must have given almost as richly as 
she received, even from Emerson. 

In 1839 the Fuller family, reunited, settled in 
Jamaica Plain, a rural suburb of Boston. The famous 
*' Conversations " began that November, and ceased in Conversa- 
April, 18-11. They were an eminently practical and BosToi"^ 
useful attempt to stimulate more serious studies and 1839-18M. 
deeper thought among the most active-minded of 
Boston women. About thirt}^ usually met, at eleven 
in the morning, a dozen times in a winter. Mar- 
garet Fuller usually introduced the topic, stimulated 
the discussion, but often gave way to those better 
informed in a special field. As those who attended 
were, nearly all, in the full current of "Transcen- 
dental " thought, the inevitable themes were com- 
parative religion (or " mythology "), conduct of life, 
ethics, education. Margaret had many of the highest 
and rarest powers of the teacher. This was one of 
the most sensible and flexible forms of " Extension " 
ever devised. The wonder is that the " Conversa- 
tions " did not then and there demonstrate and sup- 
ply a permanent need. 

Margaret's fascinating homeliness had at this time 
developed to full perfection. She was loved ardently 
by women, and became the helpful friend of many 
scholarly and active-minded men. She was generally 
accepted as at least an equal in the group of most 
advanced students and freethinkers. If a man, she 
would doubtless have been, like nearly all the 
intellectual leaders at that time, — Emerson, Hedge, 
Ripley, Clarke, Parker, Bartol, Brownson, the Chan- 
nings, and others, — a Unitarian clergyman, chafing 
at the collar even of that easy creed, and eager to 



146 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

assert the absolute freedom and divinity of her own 
soul. She and her friend Elizabeth Peabody actually 
were members, from the beginning, of the famous 
club nicknamed "Transcendental," which met first 
at Mr. Emerson's house in the fall of 1836, and 
monthly or so through several following years. 
She, even more than Ripley or Emerson, actually 
ryiai started the Dial, and never received a penny for two 

.841-1844. years' tireless editorial work. It is to be hoped she 
can still enjoy, with us. Colonel Higginson's compari- 
son of reformers with Eskimo dogs, harnessed sepa- 
rately lest they devour each other. Alcott, adrift 
in the clouds, Theodore Parker, stamping the earth, 
and most of her other contributors, alike criticised 
her driving. Broken down in health, overworked, 
and desperately poor, she escaped in 1842, and Emer- 
son reluctantly but serenely drove on to certain 
sledge-wreck two years later. As the original Pro- 
spectus of the Dial had declared, the contributors — 
supporters it never won — had "little in common 
but the love of individual freedom and the hope of 
social progress." The progress was chiefly centrif- 
ugal. That list of contributors brings together, 
however, for the first time, nearly all the chief names 
in our literature of the next thirty years. 
"Woman in Miss Fuller's book, "Woman in the Nineteenth 
the Nine- Century," was completed in 1844. It is a fearless 
Ce'ntury," demand for full equality of rights with men. Most 
1844. of the conditions she craved have long since been se- 

cured. A section of this book (quoted by Mr. Sted- 
man) gives, under the name of her friend "Mi- 
randa," a thinly veiled chapter of her own early life, 
and shows belated but cordial gratitude to her father. 



THE CONCORD GROUP 147 

In 1844-1846 Miss Fuller was a regular writer on 
the New York Tribune^ and at first a member of Mr. 
Greeley's family. Her interests and writings took 
a wide range. Here she made the over severe but 
perfectly sincere criticisms upon Longfellow's and 
Lowell's early work which, restated in her book, 
" Papers on Literature and Art " (1846), brought 
down upon her the ungallant and unfair lash of 
Lowell's most savage satire, in the "Fable for 
Critics." 

The last four years of Margaret's life were spent Life in Italy, 
in Europe. Her happy marriage to a young Italian 
count, and their death, with their child Angelo, by 
drowning, off Fire Island on her return, are well 
known. Her finished " History of the Roman 
Republic" (i.e, the short-lived republic of '48-49), 
perished with her, as we are told. 

It is not strange that this frank, fearless woman, 
conscious of intellectual mastery, should have excited 
hostility, especially among men. That even those 
who on the whole disliked, or disapproved, this novel 
type of womanhood, nevertheless felt a certain charm 
in her at the same time, seems illustrated in Haw- 
thorne's "American Notebooks," under date of 
August 22, 1842. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The " Works," edited by Margaret's brother, Rev. Arthur B. 
Fuller, are still in print (Little, Brown, & Co., New York). 
" Memoir " by Emerson, W. H. Channing, and J. F. Clarke, 
Boston, 1852. Life by Julia Ward Howe, " Eminent Women " 
series, 1883. Life by Higginson, " American Men of Letters," 
1884. See also in particular Greeley's " Recollections," and Caro- 
line W. Ball's "Margaret and her Friends : Ten Conversations." 



148 



THE NEW ENGLA:N^D PERIOD 



SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOM STUDY 

Margaret Fuller's life, as the pioneer among our professional 
women of letters, is of extreme interest as well as highly impor- 
tant. The friendship of Emerson and so many others, the dis- 
like shown by Hawthorne and still more by Lowell, make her 
the more interesting. The life by T. W. Higginson is at least 
among the best in a valuable but very uneven series, and should 
be carefully read by every serious student of our literary history. 
Mr. Greeley's testimony as to her all-sided generous helpfulness 
in personal relations is especially hearty. Mr. Wendell's cynical 
treatment of her seems to me the least pleasing page in his 
book. No teacher will find any lack of interesting material 
for discussion, and disagreement, as to this life and character. 
The present author would rather be wrong with Colonel Higgin- 
son than right with Professor Wendell, the Hawthornes, and 
Mr. Mozier. ("Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife," Vol. I, 
pp. 259-262.) 



IV. Other Friends of Emerson 

There is certainly much temptation to regard 
Alcott as merely a large, vague, ludicrous caricature, 
or distorted shadow, of Emerson on his visionary 
side. His serene helplessness in ordinary human 
relations helps out this view. A failure as peddler, 
pedagogue, plowman, poet, he relapsed contentedly 
into unlimited and unfruitful discussion of the un- 
knowable. Miss Fuller wrote once that she wished 
she could conquer her doubts as to his soundness of 
mind. His " Orphic Sayings " were the heaviest 
load the Dial carried, but he tranquilly pasted the 
parodies of them into the bulky volumes of his own 
" Scriptures." 

There was a large humorous side to the Tran- 
scendental movement and its devotees, enjoyed by 



THE CONCORD GROUP 149 

none more keenly than by "our later Franklin,'* 
Emerson himself. Alcott must often have provoked 
his silent mirth. Emerson knew, as well as Lowell, 
how promptly the elder sage betrayed himself when 
he turned to his pen, but expressed extravagantly 
his reverence for Alcott's conversational brilliancy. 
Most men thought it was but the sun admiring the 
radiance of the moon. 

Altogether, in spite of Emerson's generous judg- 
ment of the man, and a long life of tireless and 
harmless talking and writing, one is inclined to be 
grateful to Alcott chiefly as the father of his well- 
beloved daughter Louisa, who with her pen res- Louisa May 
cued the family from the depths of poverty and i832-i888 
dependence. 

The last survivor of the original Concord group 
was the poet William Ellery Channing, to be con- wmiam 
fused neither with his more famous uncle, nor with S^®^^. 

' Channing, 

his cousin William H., also a Unitarian preacher, 2d, 
who spent his later life chiefly in England. "El- i^i^-igoi. 
lery " was the favorite companion in Concord of 
Hawthorne, as readers of the delightful introduction 
to the " Mosses " will recall. His verse has all the 
willfulness of genius. One line, 

" If my bark sinks, 'tis to another sea," 

was a favorite motto of Transcendental days. He 
enjoyed the distinction, indeed, of being selected by 
Poe as the especial butt for his critical ridicule lav- 
ished on the whole daft guild. Much more beautiful 
than any of Stedman's citations in " Library " or 
" Anthology " is the stanza of Channing's quoted by 
Sanborn (p. 84), in his " Thoreau," beginning. 



150 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

" Ye heavy-hearted mariners 

Who sail this shore, 

Ye patient, ye who labor. 

Sitting at the sweeping oar, 
And see afar the flashing sea gulls play. . . ." 

Yet he is so uneven, so willful, that Emerson him- 
self complains sharply of his negligence as to rhythm 
and form generally. 

To one other friend of Emerson, though not a mem- 
George ber of the Concord group, George Ripley, there is a 
1802^1880. temptation to allude here, because his strenuous life 
is a thread which in certain ways best unites many 
things peculiarly important and now already hard to 
understand. One of the founders of the famous club, 
and of the Bial^ he also bore the chief burden and sac- 
rifice, both of money and time, in the famous Brook 
Farm experiment. As a reviewer for the Tribune^ 
and a "reader" of manuscripts for Harper's Maga- 
zine^ he rendered great though hidden service to 
letters for many years. In the list of books still 
alive in 1900, however, he appears only as editor of a 
cyclopaedia. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

" Alcott's Life and Philosophy," by F. B. Sanborn and W. T. 
Harris, two volumes, Roberts, 1893. Higginson's " Contempo- 
raries," pp. 23-33. " George Ripley," by Frothingham, in " Men 
of Letters." " Brook Farm," by Lindsay Swift, in " Studies in 
National Literature Series," Macmillan. " Transcendentalism 
in New England," O. B. Frothingham, New York, 1875. 

For Emerson's view of this group, — with himself effaced 
from its center, — see his "New England Reformers" and 
*' Transcendentalist." Louisa M. Alcott's " Transcendental 
Wild Oats " is also an intimate study. 



CHAPTER II 
Nathaniel Hawthorne 

HAWTHORNE also spent happy years in Con- Nathaniel 
cord, and the Wayside was more permanent J^^\^^^' 
than any other of his earthly homes. Yet he is 
hardly more a member of any literary group than 
Poe. Emerson himself was but his kindly village 
neighbor, and could not even approve the lonely 
artist. 

Yet, in Hawthorne's case, again, we must insist on 
the clear strain of Puritanism. An intense moral 
purpose is the very soul of his art. Through scru- 
tiny of human lives he would fain reach the mystery 
of life itself, of the divine nature, of sin and its 
atonement. His idealism is so constant that his 
creations are in danger, more than all else, of 
fading into allegorical abstractions. His work im- 
presses us as austerely truthful in its outlines. As 
for the color, also, it is indeed, usually, the somber 
gray of the prosaic earnest New England life. But 
now, in the fullness of time, there has come a sud- 
den miracle : the man appears whose touch gives to 
all things the charm of artistic form, and also the 
tender, unobtrusive grace of his own nature. 

So far as he can be understood and accounted for 
at all, we must seek the key to Hawthorne in the 
whole story of his race. "New England's poet," 

151 



152 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



Lowell's 
description 
of Haw- 
thorne in 
" Agassiz." 



our keenest critic calls him. As our most charac- 
teristic and unique gift to the world's wealth, Haw- 
thorne demands earnest and intimate study. 

In the preface of his masterpiece, the " Scarlet Let- 
ter," he himself says of the William Hathorne who 
came over with Winthrop : "I seem to have a stronger 
claim to a residence here on account of this grave- 
bearded, sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progeni- 
tor, — who came so early, with his Bible and his 
sword, and trod the unworn street with such a 
stately port. . . . He was a soldier, legislator, 
judge ; he was a ruler in the church ; he had all the 
Puritanic traits, both good and evil." That first 
American Hathorne could hardly have been as 
stately or as fearless, nor did he ever, inquisitor 
though he was, look half so deep into the hearts of 
guilty men, as his descendant. The severity of that 
ancestor toward the Quakers, the zeal of his son in 
persecuting the witches, the lonely wanderings of 
their descendants who were sea captains through 
intervening generations, all enter into the blood 
and soul of our first great romancer. There is 
hardly a glimmer of his usual half -incredulous smile, 
as he speaks of the ancestral curse, transmitted from 
the cruel and hated judge, "which the dreary and 
unprosperous condition of the race, for many a long 
year back, would argue to exist." A similar evil 
inheritance, with the curious family pride that goes 
with it, may be found delicately depicted in the Pyn- 
cheons of Hawthorne's second great romance. 

Hawthorne's father, a taciturn sailor, captain of a 
merchantman, died of yellow fever at Surinam in his 
son's fourth year. His wife survived him over four 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 153 

decades, but never resumed any social relations with 
humanity, even eating absolutely alone, in her own 
room. The elder of Hawthorne's two sisters was 
hardly less a hermit, under the same roof. Much of A lonely 
his boyhood was spent on an uncle's estate upon the y<^^^^^^°^®' 
wild shore of Lake Sebago, in Maine. There he 
wandered widely through the summer forests, and 
was at home on the lake, fishing, or in winter skating, 
oftenest alone. A serious lameness, prolonged for 
years, strengthened the deep tendency to solitude, 
and made the boy an assiduous reader, " Pilgrim's 
Progress " being an early favorite. 

A maternal uncle sent Hawthorne back to private 
schools in Salem, and supported him at Bowdoin Col- 
lege, where he graduated in 1825. A single wonder- 
ful sentence in the dedication of the "Snow Image" 
to his classmate, Horatio Bridge (1851), reveals, by 
the lightning flash of genius, the " lads at a country 
college, gathering blueberries, in study-hours, under 
those tall academic pines, or watching the great logs 
as they tumbled along the current of the Androscog- 
gin, ... or catching trouts in that shadowy little 
stream which, I suppose, is still wandering river- 
ward through the forest, though you and I will never 
cast a line in it again." 

It seems that Bridge even then prophesied a 
romancer's career for his friend. Indeed, Haw- 
thorne's ability as a writer was remarked by his 
instructors also. But the curriculum was narrow, 
the methods of teaching uninspiring, the library 
meager. Perhaps no environment would have 
made Hawthorne a scholar. His younger class- 
mate, Longfellow, under the same conditions, was 



154 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

a far more devoted student. Hawthorne was stal- 
wart, ruddy, shy, but social enough within his little 
circle, a typical college lad outwardly, with an 
inner life already barred from all profane intrusion. 

His own heart's desire was for authorship. Indeed, 
his first group of stories, the " Seven Tales of my 
Native Land," was already completed in his college 
days, offered in vain to many publishers, — and 
finally burned. The extravagant account in " The 
Devil in Manuscript " has doubtless many truthful 
details. A boyish romance of college life, " Fan- 
shawe," was actually published at his own expense, 
in 1826, but carefully suppressed soon after. 

Now follows a period of extreme seclusion for a 
dozen years. Indeed, the young author seemed at 
times about to pass completely into the strange her- 
mit life of his mother and sister. He, too, usually 
left the door of the Salem homestead only after dark, 
and avoided nearly all social relations. He did make, 
each year or so, some quiet journey or tour of obser- 
vation for a few weeks more or less, like the one 
described in "The Seven Vagabonds." He was in 
vigorous health, a desultory but wide and critical 
reader, and his pen was in constant practice. Many 
stories actually written in these years were not printed 
until much later. A trifling and irregular return did 
come to him from annual " Souvenirs," short-lived 
magazines, and similar sources. His fame grew slowly 
but securely. The lonely family apparently had suf- 
ficient means for their modest needs. 

The published portions of the " American Note- 
books," unfortunately, do not begin until the summer 
of 1835, near the end of this important period. How 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 155 

much has been suppressed we do not know. These 
careful records of Hawthorne's observations and 
thoughts were the fit tasks of his apprenticeship in An author's 
literature. It is of the utmost importance to notice g^?^®"*^*^^ 
the practical sense, the keen scrutiny, the realistic 
description, in these copious notebooks. " Keep the 
imagination sane," he says in a notable passage. His 
own creative fancy seems to have been always under 
his control. In his finished masterpieces the effects 
which he produces on other minds were always defi- 
nitely and consciously studied, based, as it were, on 
a well-reasoned psychological mastery of himself and 
of his theme. He has the dramatist's — not to say 
the magician's — consciousness of his audience. But 
the notebooks are as a rule simply materials for future 
works of art, and clearly intended for his own eye 
alone. 

These occasional " glimpses of life through a peep- 
hole " perhaps sufficed for the needs of a student 
whose chief attention was always centered on the 
innermost mysteries of the human heart itself. 
Equally close and accurate was his study of inani- 
mate nature, which is seen, for instance, in his " Main 
Street," and which gives so great a charm to such 
master scenes as the " Forest Walk " in his " Scarlet 
Letter." 

But no less important, certainly, is the develop- 
ment of Hawthorne's wonderfully lucid, easy, yet in- 
imitable style, which is the perfect garment for his 
thought. It was the result of patient daily practice 
continued through many years. He tells us that he 
never attempted anything but the simplest possible 
expression of his thought : a task quite arduous 



156 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

enough, if we remember how subtle, whimsical, pa- 
thetic, and elusive a Hawthornesque fancy may be. 
So Hawthorne came to maturity. It is profitable, 
though rasping, to read the cosmopolitan Henry 
James's analysis of our extremely provincial condi- 
tions in those days. That Hawthorne's own artistic 
genius had often felt cramped and starved, is con- 
fessed in the preface to the " Marble Faun," and 
elsewhere. It is not at all certain, however, that 
more genial conditions would have made him. a 
greater or more exquisite artist. The beauty and 
fragrance of the Epigcea repens can be perfected only 
under the dead leaves and chill snows of our long 
New England winter. Other suns, other flowers. 
Irving was ripened. Cooper apparently distracted, by 
foreign travel, international acquaintance, world-wide 
fame. Few of Hawthorne's admirers feel that he 
ever surpassed the "Scarlet Letter." After all, 
noble human lives, in the environment of nature, 
are the only adequate or necessary material for the 
highest art. Mr. James makes a portentous list 
of things which New England lacked : cathedrals, 
castles, art galleries, etc. ; but, as Dr. Holmes says : 
" There was yet enough to kindle the fancy and the 
imagination. My birth chamber looked out to the 
West. My sunsets were as beautiful as any poet 
could ask for." 
Timely es- From this seclusion of a dozen years Hawthorne 

cape from ^^^ drawn, at first much against his own will, by the 
seclusion. ° . '^ 

Peabody sisters. The elder, Elizabeth, later well 
known for a long life of active philanthropy, dis- 
covered, in 1837, that the exquisite tales which had 
delighted them for seven years, in the New England 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 157 

Magazine and elsewhere, were written by a neighbor 
and playmate of her childhood. When she intro- 
duced the coy youth to her invalid sister Sophia, the 
divine spark was at once kindled. Love worked 
such a miracle as with the Brownings, whom the 
Hawthornes long afterward knew well in Italy. To 
make an adequate income, and marry, Hawthorne 
ventured forth again into active life. 

There is a very important entry in the " Notebooks " 
under date of October 4, 1840, a retrospect in the 
light of his dawning happiness. Though cruelly 
mutilated by his widow in her editorial effort to 
efface herself from the page, it is still the utterance 
of a rescued prisoner, who had struggled vainly to 
escape unaided. After one or two attempts to 
make a living as editor and hack writer, Hawthorne 
accepted a position in the Boston customhouse, 
1839-1841. Next followed a year at Brook Farm, 
where he lost the thousand dollars he had painfully 
saved. He did not venture to marry until 1842, 
and had a precarious and scanty income for years 
thereafter. But full enjoyment of human ties, and 
of course eventually a happier, completer, and truer 
vision of life, came to Hawthorne through an ideal 
marriage. The preface to the " Mosses " should be 
studied here as a record of this happy time. 

The general character of the "American Notebooks " Unsatisfao- 
has been referred to. Hawthorne's habit of journal- '**^^/r^^^i- 
izing was apparently all but unbroken. The portions the " Note- 
printed were very severely edited by Mrs. Haw- ^°° * 
thorne. His son Julian, in his biography, has added 
a few more extracts. Of Hawthorne's purely per- 
sonal writing, in particular of his exquisite love let- 



158 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

ters, more has already been accorded us than the 
writer himself would have permitted. But the jour- 
nals, printed essentially intact, might enable us to con- 
struct the true artistic life of our greatest romancer. 
Thus, under October 25, 1836, we find fourteen 
printed pages, chiefly suggestions or germs for pos- 
sible tales and sketches. " The Christmas Banquet," 
"Virtuoso's Collection," " Procession of Life," are 
here plainly foreshadowed. There must be many 
earlier data of no less value. 

At present we are in a hopeless maze. Many of 
the finished tales lay long years awaiting the chance 
of publication. Each volume went far back, and 
culled from forgotten magazines or even unpublished 
stories. The preface to the " Mosses," in particular, 
is somewhat misleading, since it leaves the impres- 
sion that all the sketches are the output of the same 
period. Such a study as " Young Goodman Brown," 
which had been already printed in 1835, would have 
been a strange, I think an impossible, product of 
Hawthorne's first three or four happy married years. 
" The New Adam and Eve," on the contrary, seems 
all aglow with the light of new-found happiness, 
and could have been written only in the Old Manse 
itself. 

Between the boyish " Fanshawe " (1826) and the 
master's imperious bid for fame in " The Scarlet 
Letter " (1850), a quarter century, Hawthorne 
printed, and probably wrote, no tale longer than 
" The Gentle Boy," which contains about twelve 
thousand words. Everything he thought worth 
reprinting is gathered up in " Twice-told Tales," 
(Vol. I, 183T, Vol. II, 1845), " Mosses from an Old 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 159 

Manse" (1846), "Snow Image" (1852). Here are 

some eighty-two titles, which cover all the important 

work of his first period. The average length is less 

than five thousand words. So for the twenty-five 

years after leaving college Hawthorne only offered 

the world, annually, three or four very brief " short 

stories." Many experiments were indeed abandoned, 

and the results usually destroyed. The fact remains, siowpro- 

that for more than half his working career this indus- ^J^^^^^^^ss 

trious laborer could show less in bulk than some thorne. 

writers, of uniformly good taste and refinement, say . 

Marion Crawford, might produce in a single year. 

No wonder the quality and finish is exquisite. If in 

all those quiet hours of toil Hawthorne has merely 

ground a perfect lens, through which we may see 

more clearly and truly certain recesses of the human 

heart, his craftsmanship has not been wasted. 

Some titles in each collection are mere studies of 
real human life or nature, which may well have been 
trimmed out, with little or no change, from his daily 
notebooks. Thus " Night Sketches," " Sunday at 
Home," above all ''The Haunted Mind," are the 
observations and musings of a hermit. In " Sights 
from a Steeple," " Footprints on the Seashore," " Old 
Ticonderoga," the widening path is still a lonely one. 
In " The Village Uncle," which should be read side 
by side with Charles Lamb's " Dream-children," the 
fisher-maiden Susan, though sketched from life, is haz- 
ily picturesque rather than real. " The Seven Vaga- 
bonds" are human enough, are indeed mostly real 
people, who appear as such in the " American Note- 
books," but the author is there still a mere spectator, 
roving, as it were, incognito with his ne'er-do-weels. 



160 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

A particularly interesting study is '' Main Street," 
since here we see combined Hawthorne's love of 
nature, an increasing human element, the picturesque 
consciousness of the past in local history, a certain 
defiant tenderness for his birthplace, and last his curi- 
ously whimsical humor, the edge of it turned, as usual, 
mostly against his own sober self. Hawthorne's hap- 
piest local study is " The Town Pump," which he 
mentions as the " monumental brass " by which he 
will long be remembered, even in ungrateful and, on 
the whole, uncongenial Salem. His admiration for 
a great marvel of nature, his impressions of Emerson, 
Daniel Webster, and Andrew Jackson, are merged 
with his moralizing vein in " The Great Stone Face." 
Even more clearly allegorical and didactic is the use 
made of a local legend in "The Great Carbuncle." 
Yet in all these sketches, and others still, Haw- 
thorne's feet and eyes are firmly fixed on reality, 
on his native dales and hills. 

A patriotic instinct, combined with his need of 
picturesque material, led him to each episode in our 
rather homespun annals that seemed susceptible of 
dramatic treatment. Here the " Gray Champion " is a 
general favorite, though one or two of the " Legends 
of the Province House " press it closely. " The 
Gentle Boy," rather too harrowing and bitter, and 
not strongly dramatic in its finale, is as frank a con- 
fession of ancestral sin, in the persecution of the 
Quakers, as Hawthorne could make it. Most power- 
ful of all in its lurid mystery is that masterpiece of 
nocturnal description, "My Kinsman, Major Mo- 
lineux." On a slight historical basis Hawthorne 
here creates a most realistic yet imaginative and 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 161 

unforgettable picture. No attentive reader of this 
brief sketch can ever again call Hawthorne colorless, 
vague, or dreamy. He uses oftenest, indeed, the 
chiaroscuro of softer lights and gentler shadows than 
these, but always with a skilled and masterful hand* 
Longfellow manages to utter his admiration for this 
tale in the prelude of the " Wayside Inn," and Haw- 
thorne wrote him that it was *' as if I had been 
gazing up at the moon and detected my own features 
in its profile." 

Two of his own tendencies Hawthorne has de- 
scribed in impatient self-criticism as "curst," or 
" blasted " : his love of solitude, and his fondness for 
allegory, the full meaning of w^hich he himself was 
often unable fully to unriddle after the creative 
mood was forgotten. The ancestral belief in witch- 
craft certainly lingered in him only as a possible 
artistic motive. In his own fearless and confiding 
nature there was no lurking-place for belief in de- 
moniacal powers, nor for any real doubt or dread con- 
cerning the Divine Love. His moral teachings point 
rather to the eventual redemption of each human soul, 
through the suffering that sin and remorse must 
bring. This paragraph is written expressly to in- 
sist, that Young Goodman Brown, terrific and vivid 
as his visions are, saw nothing in the forest save the 
reflection of the evil he bore thither in his own heart. 
It is but a dramatic allegory, in which the old Puri- 
tan's belief is set forth and moralized. Yet its 
dangerously vivid realism made the night forest a 
place of dread for our own boyhood. 

There are other grewsome tales in these volumes, 
notably "The White Old Maid," which childish 



162 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



Audacity, 
and sanity, 
of the Haw- 
thornesque 
imagina- 
tion. 



readers should not see. But we must insist always 
on the great gulf that divides Hawthorne from Poe. 
The Puritan artist had an imagination at least as 
audacious and creative, but he never lost the mastery- 
over his own phantasmata, never used his art for 
other than moral purposes. He was absolutely sane. 

There are some sketches wherein the allegorical 
and didactic purpose is almost too simple and plain. 
Even a child suspects that " Daffydowndilly " is but a 
sermon, and prefers " Little Annie's Ramble." " The 
Threefold Destiny " will have a like flavor for aspir- 
ing youth. " Ethan Brand," the man whose heart 
has turned to stone, has a more occult meaning. In 
this story there is much realistic detail, "lifted" 
bodily from the "Notebooks." 

In a number of cases Hawthorne openly attempts 
to assign speech and dramatic action to abstract 
ideas. " The Sister Years " is rather a hackneyed 
motive. "• Fancy's Showbox," " Hollow of Three 
Hills," " Earth's Holocaust," will never be general 
favorites. Indeed, these avowed allegories are little 
to the taste of our age. " A Virtuoso's Collection " 
should be read carefully, not so much for the impos- 
sible rarities therein assembled as for the indirect 
light it throws on Hawthorne's own reading and in- 
terests generally. " P.'s Correspondence " supple- 
ments it helpfully. " The Celestial Railroad " is a 
direct and happy acknowledgment of the author's 
debt to Bunyan. 

Lastly we may refer to certain etherealized and 
peculiarly Hawthornesque studies, in which the 
secret of life, of sin, of art, of beauty, seems ever on 
the point of being revealed or attained. Such are the 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 163 

" Artist of the Beautiful," " Rappaccini's Daughter," 
" Lily's Quest," and others. Most dramatic, healthiest, 
most humorous of these is " Dr. Heidegger's Experi- 
ment." It is doubly interesting, because in his last 
years, when habituated to the larger canvas of the 
romance, Hawthorne made repeated but vain attempts 
to return to the motive here lightly and happily 
used : the quest after the elixir of perpetual youth. 
All such classification as is here attempted must 
be incomplete. No tale or sketch of Hawthorne is 
without some unique charm and value. All are at 
least gracefully worded. In any choice selection of 
short stories he should still be far more largely rep- 
resented than any other American. 

After the four years of happy poverty in the Old 
Manse, 1842-1846, followed three of drudgery as 
surveyor in the Salem customhouse. In 1849 the 
incoming Whigs not only displaced Hawthorne the 
Democrat, but slandered his official character to 
excuse the removal. The next year, 1849-1850, was 
doubtless the darkest winter in his life. Haw- 
thorne's mother and sisters were now under one roof 
with his wife and children, and in this year his mother 
died, after a long and painful illness. Hawthorne Genius tri- 
himself and all his family were ill. Unable to col- "Sw^rr^'' 
lect what was due him from editors, he was com- conditions, 
pelled to accept a generous gift of money collected 
among his friends. This indeed he always regarded 
as a loan, and eventually repaid. The libels on his 
character distressed his friends, apparently, more 
than himself. Under such conditions the " Scarlet 
Letter " was written. This triumph of genius over 



164 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



" Scarlet 
Letter," 
1850. 



outward difficulties was perhaps equaled by Mrs. 
Stowe, a year or so later. 

The supreme subject, to which every great artist 
aspires, is the life of man as a whole. As the lyric is 
but the utterance of a single mood, as the idyl is the 
picture of one incident or scene, so the short story is 
as it were a one-act drama ; it can deal effectively 
only with a single crisis of inner or outward life, not 
with the larger curve of destiny. The doom of a 
Macbeth, a Hamlet, a Lear, even the lighter loss and 
easy recovery of a Rosalind or a Prospero, could not 
be set before us in one brief scene. So the gradual 
fall of Tito, the painful uplifting of Romola's nature, 
require the larger space of the romance. The great- 
est masterpiece of human imagination, the " Comme- 
dia " of Dante Alighieri, is also the completest vision 
of man's education through penitence and purgation. 

The appearance of the " Scarlet Letter " is probably, 
then, the largest event thus far in American litera- 
ture. Here, for the first time, a life, or a group of 
intertwined lives, is revealed, with entrancing skill, 
in an environment and with an atmosphere all the 
artist's own, yet impressing us as ideally true to 
human nature. Our pity and terror, excited by the 
sin, the remorse, and the long agony of Hester 
Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, leave every reader 
the sadder, the better, the purer. No wonder that, 
in after years, many a man, tortured by hidden crime, 
came to the wise and pitiful romancer as to a priest, 
able to hear confession, and perhaps to appoint pen- 
ance, if not to accord absolution. The lonely years 
of Hawthorne's youth had been well spent, even if 
this one work had been their only fruit. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 165 

There was much repression still in Hawthorne's 
art. The whole tale contains hardly seventy thou- 
sand words. It begins after the guilty lovers are 
already parted, by remorse and by human law. Only 
once, seven years later, do they speak freely together 
without witnesses. In that hour hope and love flash 
up once more, only to heighten the parting by death 
that inevitably follows. This is not, indeed, properly 
a story of passionate love itself, but of atonement 
for the sin. The weaker nature is tortured to death, 
the stronger is uplifted, and has yet a long life of 
self-sacrificing usefulness to live out. Happiness 
may have come at last, a shy, half-welcome guest, 
even to her, while Pearl, the innocent result of a 
misguided yet divinely implanted passion, has no 
lasting share in her mother's ignominy. 

Hester dominates the scene as completely and con- 
stantly as an Antigone or a Medea. Even to the 
physical vision this seems typified, as she stands 
lonely upon the scaffold in the first chapter, and 
again, with her lover, her child, and her husband, 
at the close of the tale. The statuesque uplifting 
of the chief sufferer raises the romance high above 
"Adam Bede," where indeed both the erring lovers 
seem rather unworthy of our deep and prolonged 
sjanpathy. 

The setting of the story is carefully studied, and 
in some sense historic. That, however, is and should 
be a minor matter, a mere quest of effective back- 
ground to set off the human character. Even over 
this gloomiest of his longer stories the Hawthornesque 
humor occasionally plays, as when the occurrence of 
a brief dialogue of Hester with Mistress Hibbins is 



166 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

left to the reader's credulity or disbelief. The child, 
Pearl, is naturally accorded many a lighter touch. 

As a rule, the stern Puritanic beliefs seem to be 
accepted unquestioned. We are once even told 
that Roger Chillingworth was likely to secure for 
his victim " eternal alienation from the Good and the 
True." Yet this, like all our author's witch scenes, 
is merely artistic belief on Hawthorne's part. His 
own inmost creed of human hope and unforfeited 
Divine Love glimmers through his darkest canvases. 
Arthur escapes his tormentor after all. And even 
to the half-devilish old man, a blacker sinner than 
the young victims of impulsive passion, "we would 
fain be merciful." "In the spiritual world" even 
these bitterest foemen may "have found their earthly 
stock of hatred and antipathy transmuted into golden 
love." Hate, then, and sin, says the romancer, should 
at last become the means of our education and salva- 
tion ; a heresy so appalling that our Puritan ances- 
tors doubtless never conceived of it as possible. 

The " Scarlet Letter," published early in 1850, was 
at once successful. Hawthorne was now a famous 
author, his acute financial worries were over. The 
next few years were the most fruitful by far in his 
entire life. They were also marked by three migra- 
tions in the vain quest for a settled home. The 
" House of Seven Gables" and " Wonder-Book " were 
written at Lenox, in western Massachusetts, in 1851; 
the "Blithedale Romance," 1852, in West Newton, 
near Boston. By June, 1852, the family were again 
settled in Concord, having bought Alcott's house, 
the Wayside, two miles from the old manse by the 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 167 

river. Here were written the " Tanglewood Tales " 
and the campaign life of Franklin Pierce, his college 
classmate and lifelong friend. But the very next 
year Hawthorne accepted the lucrative consulship 
at Liverpool, which made a long and all but fatal 
break in his artistic career. 

By reading aloud the " Scarlet Letter " Hawthorne 
had sent his wife to bed with a headache. The sec- 
ond romance seemed to him a truer and happier 
utterance of his inner self. There is a milder, more 
genial tone, his whimsical humor plays over many 
of its scenes. The little country cousin Phoebe was 
no doubt a cheering surprise to the author himself. 
Upon the finale a soft autumnal sunshine seems to 
rest. Yet the morality of the plot is austere, and 
the hereditary curse, as well as the loneliness and 
silence within the Pyncheon house, seem closely akin 
to the author's own Salem life and that of his for- 
bears. 

Young readers need no introduction to the " Won- " Wonder- 
der-Book," of which " Tanglewood " is but a second . T^L^^gief ^ 
volume. Each treats six classical myths in the hajD- wood 
piest fashion. There is no more delightful contribu- 1^3^' 
tion to classicism in our literature. Of course the 
Greek tales are freely recast, the creative element is 
large ; as Hawthorne himself says of his imaginary 
story-teller Eustace, " he disregarded all classical 
authorities, whenever the vagrant audacity of his 
imagination impelled him to do so " ; but we would 
as soon quarrel with Shelley for making delightful 
English poetry of the Homeric Hymns. Hawthorne's 
golden touch was happier than that of Midas. 

The " Blithedale Romance " is the chief literary 



168 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

" Biithedaie memorial of the Brook Farm experiment, often men- 
^mance," tioned in these pages. Hawthorne was an original 
member, invested and left there all he had saved, 
worked more laboriously in the field and barnyard 
than almost any of his companions, yet must have 
seemed to them always a taciturn, critical, and rather 
quizzical spectator. He can hardly have shared their 
dream of reforming human society. He did plan to 
marry and settle among them, but in the spring of 
1842, after a year in the community, he rather sud- 
denly departed. His marriage and settlement in 
Concord of course kept him in touch with the 
Transcendentalists, through their chief prophet and 
others. But more than ten years elapsed before his 
experience was transmuted into material for romance. 
Indeed, some such remoteness, in time and space, 
from his realistic materials and actual experiences, 
was always a necessity to Hawthorne's art. 

The characters in " Biithedaie " are in no sense 
copies from life, least of all portraits of his Roxbury 
associates. The scenery is realistic. The minor 
incidents may occasionally be identified in the " Note- 
books " and other memorials of Brook Farm. The 
suicide of Zenobia and the recovery of her rigid body 
from the water are a transcript from actual experi- 
ence of Hawthorne's at Concord, quoted for us from 
his journal by his son. (Vol. I, pp. 296-303. It is 
interesting to remark that Mrs. Hawthorne cut this en- 
tire incident out of the published "Notebooks," doubt- 
less because it happened on the night after the happy 
first anniversary of their marriage.) Such use by the 
romancer of his own real observations has been noted 
before in " Ethan Brand " and " Seven Vagabonds." 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 169 

These close relations to Hawthorne's own past life 
perplex the reader of " Blithedale," and on the whole 
must have hampered the creative artist. The central 
purpose of the story is not clear, unless, indeed, it be 
merely to show that any attempt at sudden reform 
of human society will be wrecked by selfish passions 
or narrow aims. It is perhaps from this point of 
view that some of his old associates resented Haw- 
thorne's romance. 

The warmest discussion has been upon the identity 
of Zenobia with Margaret Fuller, who was not, in- 
deed, a member, but a frequent and friendly visitor 
in the Roxbury circle. The question is well stated, 
pro by Henry James, in his " Hawthorne," contra by 
Colonel Higginson in his life of Margaret. It seems 
to the present writer at least plain that the life and 
death of Margaret Fuller must have colored, and 
probably suggested, the most vivid and realistic 
character Hawthorne ever created. 

The perfect balance of qualities which had made 
purely creative work fully successful seems already 
to be disturbed in this experiment. With perfect 
leisure and freedom from all vulgar anxieties, it 
might have been fully recovered. As a matter of 
fact, it never was quite regained. 

The journalizing habit alone, not at all creative 
activity, continued through the long official residence 
in England. The book called " Our Old Home " is 
little but a transcript from such journals. It is not 
written by the imaginative romancer at all, but by a 
shrewd, sensible, practical Yankee. Like Emerson's 
" English Traits," it aroused resentment among our 
self-satisfied insular cousins. This strong human. 



170 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

and as it were earthy, side of our chief magician and 
artist of the beautiful is seen best of all in a long 
dispatch to the Secretary of State, Lewis Cass, on 
the atrocious conditions then existing upon vessels 
flying the American flag. It is quoted by Julian 
Hawthorne (" Life," Vol. II, pp. 153-161). 

Hawthorne was of course greatly broadened and 
enriched mentally by his two years in Italy (1858- 
" Marble 1859). The "Marble Faun," his longest romance, 
1860^' begun there and completed in England the next 

year, has still a great circulation. Indeed, it has 
been copiously illustrated with photographs, and is 
in use as a sort of supplementary guidebook for 
central Italy, particularly Florence and Rome. This 
fashion, which would hardly please Hawthorne's own 
fastidious taste, is perhaps itself an evidence that the 
romancer was somewhat overwhelmed and dominated 
by the wealth of new impressions. There is too 
much scenery, too much art criticism, overlaying the 
simple, intense, psychological plot of the tale, just as 
Romola, Tito, and their nearest associates are some- 
times lost in the mazes of Florentine politics and 
social life of four centuries agone. 

This romance is a franker and more elaborate study 
of the problem treated in the " Scarlet Letter," 
whether sin, especially a sin of impulse committed 
in love's name, may be the chief or even the indis- 
pensable means of educating an undeveloped soul. 
But there is much force in the popular complaint 
that the mysteries elaborately wrought into the plot 
are never elucidated at all. The reluctant added 
chapter, wrung from the author for a later edition, 
only uttered more clearly the truth, that there was 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 171 

no solution to give. Surely this is evidence of im- 
perfect constructive power. 

The health and spirits of Hawthorne were already insidious 
undermined by the terrible illness of his daughter ^ainLT^ 
Una in Rome. His four remaining years were largely end. 
spent in vain struggles to complete a romance having 
for its motive eternal youth, or at least the quest for 
some magical restorative of vigor. The artist's own 
quest was doubly vain. The exquisite fragments of 
his various attempts have a pathological interest, 
quite remote from the value of those earliest sug- 
gestions out of which perfect tales were developed 
in his middle period. The man, the philosopher, the 
moralist, may have grown to the last, as ma}^ be no 
less true of Tolstoi or Goethe. But certainly that 
perfect artistic poise which made a great and perfect 
romance possible was won and lost within a brief 
tale of months. Two faultless larger romances, the 
*' Scarlet Letter " and the " House of the Seven 
Gables," are the highest points in Hawthorne's noble 
and inspiring career. Such briefer tales as the 
" Snow Image " and the " Gray Champion " are 
tasks quite as masterly and exquisite, but of course 
also far less arduous. 

We are glad to be assured, from many sources, 
that Hawthorne's last quarter century, at least, con- 
tained all the happiness that can well be included in 
a mortal's lot. His last years were embittered by 
the Civil War, but by no acute anxiety or agonizing 
physical pain. His death was absolutely unconscious 
and without warning. His gifted wife, and the three 
children, who all shared in some degree the parents' 
literary powers, survived him. The common voice. 



life 



172 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

and the most discerning critics also, bad long ac- 
corded him the highest place in our young literature. 
A happy Surely Solon himself would call this a happy life, 

and regrets for what might have been are of course 
as vain, though perhaps as inevitable, as in the case 
of Keats, or Clough, or Chatterton. If each creative 
genius is indeed unique, and the unshaped master- 
piece is our eternal loss, then we must hope that, in 
a better organized social state, leisure and freedom 
may in some way be provided for those who have 
once for all clearly revealed creative power. But if 
character counts most after all, then no man should 
escape the turmoil of life. The Salem customhouse 
seems to have brought, even to Hawthorne the 
romancer, a richer gift tlian could ever have come 
to his hermit's cell. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The authorized publishers of all Hawthorne's works are 
Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. " A Study of Hawthorne," by G. P. 
Lathrop, Houghton & Mifflin. " Hawthorne," by Henry James, 
in " English Men of Letters." " Nathaniel Hawthorne and his 
Wife," by Julian Hawthorne. " Some Memories of Hawthorne," 
by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop. 

See also brief studies by Mr. and Mrs. Fields, Whipple, Hig- 
ginson, Curtis, Leslie Stephen, etc. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOM STUDY 

The extremely full treatment of Hawthorne in the text 
doubtless covers this ground. In particular, the " American 
Notebooks" should be carefully compared with the creative 
works. The "Italian Notebooks" throw similar light on the 
"Marble Faun." The classical student may profitably study 
the treatment of the myths in " Tanglewood " and the " Won- 
der-Book," comparing them, for instance, with Ovid. 



CHAPTER III 

THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 

THE very title of this chapter appears to indicate 
something transitory. And yet strife, reform, 
strenuous effort, in one form or another, for better 
conditions of life, seems unending; and any especial 
struggle may be at least as heroic, perhaps also as 
largely typical of all human effort, as Avas the rescue 
of Helen, or the battlefields of knightly Arthur. 
Such a typical and human struggle is the ideal stuff 
for literature. To understand fully " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin," or the " Biglow Papers," we must have a 
clear vision of the terrible death-wrestle between 
the two economic and social systems, which fought 
for the control of a continent as inevitably as red 
men and white, or later, French men and English, 
had striven before them. 

The necessity of this duel was not evident from 
the beginning. The presence of negro slaves in The sin of 
America is chargeable at least as much to the North ^^tlonai not 
as to the South. Slavery gradually disappeared in sectional, 
the one section, chiefly because it was unprofitable. 
The makers of the Constitution expected it to vanish 
altogether; the invention of the cotton gin frustrated 
that hope. Even more Northern states, as Virginia 
and Kentucky, now found profit in the wholesale 
breeding of human live stock, for the cotton fields 
and rice swamps of the extreme South. As slavery 

173 



174 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



came to be the underpinning of all business and 
social life, the presence of free blacks in those states 
grew more and more unwelcome. 

Yet even so, the two sections remained long united 
by the closest political and mercantile ties. The 
cotton mills lined the New England rivers. The 
South was the chief market of Eastern manufactures. 
Age of com- The marvelous and, later, decisive growth of the 
promises. "V^est was but in its beginnings. Frank denuncia- 
tion of slavery, on moral or economic grounds, was 
occasionally heard, but generally deprecated. In 
particular, the conscience of the Northern churches 
was quieted by the colonization movement : and this 
shipping away of half-willing blacks, freeborn or 
liberated, to Africa, was welcomed and aided in the 
Southern states, because it drained off their most 
menacing social element. So slavery gained strength 
steadily in America, while the rest of the civilized 
world faced ever more and more the other way. 

Against all this, one opinionated, pugnacious, heroic 
man set his face, and insisted on a hearing. " I am 
in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, 
I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be 
HEARD," said Garrison, when he founded the Lib- 
erator in January, 1831. Heard he was, threatened, 
mobbed, but never silenced. The discussion went 
on exactly three decades, until lost forever in the 
din of civil war. 

That this period of thirty years is a definite his- 
toric epoch is now easily seen. But the chief of that 
little band of agitators was long ridiculed, despised, 
or denounced as a persistent madman or incarnate 
fiend, a Guy Fawkes- waving a torch while the whole 



THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 175 

social structure was mined. Doubtless the two most 
helpful early converts of Garrison were Wendell 
Phillips, who brought to the fray the silver clarion 
of his gracious and resistless eloquence, and John 
Greenleaf Whittier, the rustic Quaker youth, with 
his high-pitched, half- discordant pipe of few and 
simple stops. Later arrived Hosea Biglow and 
Harriet Beecher Stowe, a mighty reenforcement. 
Fanaticism, narrowness, all forms of self-confidence 
and crankiness, came also. Persecution itself has its 
peculiar charm for such folk. Vested wealth, party 
organizations, all the churches save the Quakers, were 
against them. Yet still their numbers grew, and 
now they are honored as the pioneers of the new era. 

Three currents — the Transcendental movement, Three cur- 
making for widest freedom in religious thought, the 
eager broadening of general culture through lecture 
courses as well as books, the passion for reform in 
general gradually concentrating in Abolitionism — 
are nearly coincident in time, all mainly local in 
New England, and largely even urged on by the 
same men. Yet they are not, of course, connected 
like links in a single chain. Emerson, Ticknor, Gar- 
rison, seem even now almost divergent forces. 

I. John Greenleaf Whittier 

That a devout Quaker, who wore the broad brim, john 
and used through life the ungrammatical "thee," ^'^®^^?®^^ 
is the accepted popular poet for the whole land 1807-1892. 
of the Puritan, is a happ}^ turn of Time's whirli- 
gig. But the persecuted early disciples of Fox 
sprang, like their inquisitors, from the sturdiest and 



rents in one 
channel. 



176 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

best-cultivated English stock. Both could show 
much heroism in stubborn passive resistance. Whit- 
tier's stalwart ancestor, indeed, who came over as a 
youth in 1638, and who hewed in 1688 the beams for 
the Haverhill homestead, was not himself one of the 
Friends, though disfranchised many a year for stanch 
refusal to withdraw his signature on a petition to 
the legislature, pleading for tolerance and mercy 
toward them. The same Thomas Whittier treated 
the Indians so justly and fearlessly, that even when 
the atrocities of savage warfare filled all the Merri- 
mac Valley, the dark faces in war paint only leered 
harmlessly in at his unbolted windows as they passed 
by day or night. Some later members of the family 
made their consistent Quakerism doubtful by filling 
honorably civic and military offices. Our rural lau- 
reate himself had a lifelong talent and love for poli- 
tics, and was nowise lacking even in the needful 
craft. As to his fighting blood, so shrewd and hu- 
morous an observer as Hawthorne smiled early at 
"the fiery Quaker youth to whom the Muse has 
perversely assigned a battle trumpet," and Lowell in 
the " Fable for Critics " is equally happy. 

The lonely old farmhouse by the brookside in 
East Haverhill is now, thanks to " Snow-Bound," the 
best known in all the land. It is, fortunately, re- 
stored and secured as a permanent memorial of the 
poet's early years. " In Schooldays," " My Play- 
mate," "Barefoot Boy," "To my Old Schoolmas- 
ter," add fresh strokes to the simple picture of 
A New that boyhood. Enjoyable also is the quiet humor 

b^^h^^d ^^ ^ prose essay by Whittier, full of early memories, 
on "Yankee Gypsies." These earlier wanderers 



THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 177 

seem to have been an altogether more gifted, cannier, 
and less numerous guild than the modern tramps. 
From the lips unshorn of a pawky auld gaberlunzie 
in the big family kitchen the boy first heard the 
notes of " Bonnie Doon," " Highland Mary," and 
" Auld Lang Syne." 

Books were as scarce as money at the Essex 
farmer's ample hearthstone. It was a winter school- 
master, — not the youth mentioned in " Snow-Bound," 
but Joshua Coffin, later a comrade in the crusade of johsua 
Abolition, — who brought to the kitchen fireside, ?7°q?!}'864. 
read aloud, and lent to the shy eager lad of fourteen, 
the very book he needed most, the songs of Burns. 
What it meant to Whittier he has himself best 
told us. 

One volume, indeed, Whittier well knew years 
earlier still, and remained always peculiarly under 
its influence. Even toward that book the " Inner 
Light " gave him a sturdy independence of private 
judgment. As a child at his mother's knees he 
remarked that King David could not have been a 
good Quaker. When near eighty, defending him- 
self, in a letter to John Bright, for having admired 
" Chinese " Gordon, he compares his martial hero 
favorably, as a merciful victor, with David and 
Joshua. 

His schooling was scanty, heavy tasks on the farm 
injured his delicate frame for life, and poverty was 
long his helpful and welcome companion; but he never 
had any prolonged or discouraging struggle for a 
hearing as a rhymer. His danger lay quite in the 
other direction. His facility in verse was excessive, 
from childhood to old age. His best poems will 



178 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

generally bear excision of the weaker stanzas. His 
keen interest in every question of the hour made his 
vigorous, easy verses only too popular, for other than 
poetic qualities. Hundreds of his early poems were 
printed, often widely copied and read, which he suc- 
ceeded in suppressing, or at least in keeping out of 
his collections, in mature years. 

Whittier was his life long an active-minded man^ 
a reader of many books, a friend of statesmen and 
scholars, a student of history and literature. Yet 
there was a certain narrowness in his habits of 
thought, a still more marked simplicity, even monot- 
ony, in his utterance. The great cause to which he 
consecrated his manhood lifted his character and his 
art out of the commonplace, which they could hardly 
otherwise have escaped. It is not at all desirable, 
even if it were possible, for any one to read all hi& 
occasional and polemic poetry. Yet there is no 
author, unless it be Hawthorne, so indispensable to 
an understanding gf what is most characteristic, and 
best, in the later Puritanism. 

It was Garrison, as editor of the Free Press in 
Newburyport, who first printed Whittier's verses, 
and, himself a youth but three years older, who had 
not yet found his life task, encouraged the tall, awk- 
ward, yet ardently ambitious, lad of nineteen to 
improve his education and perfect his peculiar talent. 
Whittier's full adhesion to the cause of Abolition was- 
given in 1833, and cost him a rather promising polit- 
ical career, probably an early election to Congress. 
From various editorial ventures he again and again 
returned to the farm. He early paid off the inher- 
ited mortgage, but after his father's death sold the: 



THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 179 

sterile acres, in 1836, and after a breakdown of his 
health in 1840 spent the rest of his days quietly in 
the village of Amesbury. He was there not a her- 
mit, surely, as Longfellow hails him, but a contented 
yet alert recluse, whose pen never wearied. In truth 
he was more absorbed in the actual battles of his 
own time than was the poet of "Evangeline." 

When Daniel Webster, in 1850, made his famous 
speech of conciliation, or surrender to the slave states, 
Whittier's barbed lyric, "Ichabod," smote even deeper 
home than the single fierce sentence of gentle Emer- 
son. This is doubly interesting, because the venerable 
oratpr and the fiery poet were kinsmen, both inheriting 
their cavernous and lustrous dark eyes from that 
famous old preacher, Stephen Bachiler, who till past Stephen 
fourscore and ten was long a thorn in the side of i^^.j^ 
the New England brethren. Moreover, Whittier has 
come nearer to an apology for this poem than for 
any other, by setting beside it, out of due order, 
some verses written long after Webster's death, full 
of confidence in his patriotism. 

When the first storm clouds of the coming Civil 
War were gathering in distant Kansas, his " Song of 
the Emigrants " was on every wanderer's lip. It is as 
a Puritan that he speaks for them : — 

"We cross the prairie, as of old 
The pilgrims crossed the sea, 
To make the West, as they the East, 
The homestead of the free ! " 

Though horrified, as all should be, by some earlier 
acts of John Brown, Whittier celebrated in verse the 
kiss bestowed on the negro infant in the march to 



180 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

the gallows. Through the Civil War he chafed more 
and more against the Quaker tenet of non-resistance. 
Whittier suffered less than might be supposed for 
his Abolitionism. The rural portions of New Eng- 
land were early won to that faith. The turmoil of 
political strife did perhaps delay the molding of 
other forms for his simple art. As he says in the 
" Garrison of Cape Ann " (1857) : — 

" The great eventful Present hides the Past ; but through the 
din 
Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in ; 
And the lore of home and fireside, and the legendary rhyme, 
Make the task of duty lighter which the true man owes his 
time." 

There is no hint of repining here. The Quaker 
militant has no wish to bury himself among his books, 
like Longfellow, until 

" The tumult of a time disconsolate 
To inarticulate murmurs dies away," 

nor does he wish to flee from the noise of conflict 
to the field as Emerson did, or to the forest as Bryant 
would gladly have done. Whittier, also, was to have 
abundant time to utter freely all the simple vital 
thoughts that peaceful days could ripen. Indeed, 
" Burns," " Maud Muller," ^' The Barefoot Boy," were 
already sung. 

Certainly in that very year, 1857, Whittier's life, 
at fifty, was assured of outward success. The long 
breach between the Garrisonian irreconcilables and 
those who, like Whittier, sought to attack slavery by 
constitutional and political activity, was healed at 
last. In the same year his collected maturer poems 



Ireson. 



THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 181 

were published, in the beloved bliie-and-gold edition. 
The foundation of the Atlantic^ also, made him 
an honored member in a congenial circle, and pro- 
vided an adequate utterance for the cause nearest to 
his heart, as well as for the sweeter poetry that now 
flowed more and more freely. The " Last Walk " in 
the autumn of that year is perhaps his most perfect 
sustained lyric. 

In this same year, also, appeared the local narrative 
poem over which a little war of words arose and 
lingers still. To Skipper Ireson, a brave and blame- " Floyd 
less man, the verses did grievous injustice, as Whittier 
himself came to believe. Curiously enough, the best 
rebuttal will be found in a book of the East Indian 
Kipling: "Captains Courageous." 

Just as the war closed, Whittier published " Snow- 
Bound," which is generally felt to be his strongest 
bid for lasting fame. Certainly it won him a secure 
corner in the heart and memory of every loyal child 
of the New England Puritans. A forced and dis- 
located passage near the close, 

" Of such as he, 
Shall Freedom's young apostle be," etc. 

marks the date of composition, but should have 
been canceled. The young schoolmaster of whom 
the poet had been speaking was George Haskell. 
He had wholly vanished for over forty years from the 
horizon of Whittier, who indeed did not, until years 
later, recall his name. 

Even the fiery lyrics of the ante-bellum days had 
found readers South as well as North of the great 
divide. The old age of Whittier, was, as he some- 
times smilingly hinted, almost too peaceful. 



ambition. 



182 THE ]^EW ENGLAND PERIOD 

" Methinks the spirit's temper grows 
Too soft in this still air ! " 

He could not be induced to attend the Centennial of 
Washington's inauguration, in 1889, and read his 
own verses, but the poem of the octogenarian is 
full of pious confidence and inspiring patriotism. 
Weakened by age and slow decay, long somewhat 
cut off from social life by his deafness, conscious that 
his life work was fully done, Whittier met the 
approach of death, not merely with resignation and 
faith, but with an eager sense of relief, in his eighty- 
fifth year. 

It is difficult to weigh in Shylock's balance the 
exact value of such a man's work. The popular 
Early output of his early years he has himself almost 

wholly suppressed, and our judgment would un- 
doubtedly agree in the main with his. There was, 
however, a poem called " New England," originally 
composed in 1830, the closing stanza of which was 
omitted, even two years later in "Moll Pitcher." 
Yet this stanza is of especial interest, and has all 
the easy grace of his best later verse. 

" Land of my fathers ! if my name, 
Now humble and unwed to fame, 
Hereafter burn upon the lip 

As one of those which may not die, 
Linked in eternal fellowship 

With visions pure and strong and high, — 
. . . And over temples worn and gray 

The starlike crown of glory shine, — 
Thine be the bard's undying lay, 

The murmur of his praise be thine ! " 

This prayer, and vow, was in fair measure ful- 
filled. Even the bitterest opponents of Whittier 



THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 183 

have usually felt the sincere patriotism pulsing 
beneath his fiercest words. Usually, too, while 
smiting the sin he has charity for the sinner : the 
exception as to " Ichabocl," remarked on above, 
being a notable proof of the rule. His sympathies 
with the oppressed were world-wide, and sometimes 
perhaps not fully deserved, as in the case of Toussaint 
L'Ouverture, who was far more extravagantly eulo- 
gized by Whittier's kindred spirit, Wendell Phillips. 
There are three other directions in which the 
Quaker poet excels, though they are not widely 
divergent, and even occasionally merge in one. 
First we may mention his poems of friendship. It Whittier's 
was with a personal tribute to Garrison that Whit- "®° ^ ^* 
tier sealed his enlistment in 1833 : — 



" Champion of those who groan beneath 
Oppression's iron hand ! " 



James T. Fields and Bayard Taylor are lovingly James 

described in " Tent on the Beach " ; Taylor, Charles ^^^-^^^^ 

Sumner, and Emerson, in "Last Walk in Autumn." I8I6-I88I. 

Whittier and Dr. Holmes exchanged many tender g^ay^Jd 

greetings in advanced age. The most direct forms Taylor, 

of address were sometimes used, as in the case of cj^aries 

Fremont, to men whom the poet had never met. Sumner, 
In general, personal feeling, sympathy or antipathy, 
is very strong and vital with him. 

Perhaps his closest friendships were with women. 

His frankest utterance of feeling as to death is Lydia Maria 

addressed to Mrs. Child. Some merry doggerel ^^y.^,""^^ 

sent to Lucy Larcom, the cheery and gifted gradu- 1802-1880. 

ate of a Lowell factory, will reveal a very human ^^^ 

side of his nature. " How Mary Grew " is a punning i824^i893. 



184 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

love-poem to the last survivor of the old Aboli- 
tionist circle in Philadelphia. An utterance of closer 
affection will be found in the poem called " Mem- 
ories," and was perhaps repeated thirty years later 
in "A Sea Dream." The key to its meaning is fully 
given, for the first time, in the " Century " for May, 
1902. Most of Whittier's long, unwedded life was 
sweetened by the full sympathy of three noble 
women, his mother. Aunt Mercy, and sister Eliza- 
beth. The sister shared the lyric gift, and her 
poems are included in the collections of her brother's 
works. 

Whittier, secondly, is a lover of nature. His 
loyal admirers will hardly accept the modest dis- 
claimer in his beautiful " Proem," wherein he says : — 

" Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, 
Or softer shades, of Nature's face, 
I view her common forms with unanointed eyes." 

The New England hills and dales, the rock-bound 
coasts and their scanty legends, are inseparably 
associated with his verse. To them his memory 

long shall 

" Cling as clings the tufted moss." 

Wordsworth's landscape is not ours. Bryant lacks 
the eager throb of life and love. Emerson is a 
philosopher, Lowell a bookman, no peasant, at heart, 
most of the year, though not when the bobolink 
comes. Whittier's is always our own voice, even to 
its monotonous tone and rough dialect. 

Lastly, he interprets as no other of our poets the 
innermost feelings of religious faith and trust. In 
all hymn books, of whatever creed, he is represented. 



THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 185 

In conscious mental weakness, in physical agony, 
under the shadow of death and deadly doubt, his 
words come to the lips as inevitably as David's 
sweetest psalms. His "Old Burying Ground" is less 
lonely than Bryant's "Crowded Street." Even 
Tennyson's " Crossing the Bar," Browning's " Pros- 
pice," or Stevenson's cheeriest note of them all, the 
" Requiem," is not more inspiriting, as we face in 
thought the last great earthly change, than " My 
Psalm" or "The Eternal Goodness." 

If Whittier's music, his thought, his fancy, was 
essentially commonplace, as colder critics insist, so 
much the more marvelous is its infinite helpfulness 
to millions of men and women. And after all, what 
is the commonplace, save the human side of the 
largest kosmic truths? 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Whittier's "Works," Riverside Edition, 7 vols., Houghton. 
" Poems," Cambridge Edition, Houghton. " Life and Letters," 
by Pickard, 2 vols., Houghton. "Life," by F. H. Underwood, 
Houghton. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOM WORK 

In connection with " Snow-Bound," the essays, " The Fish I 
didn't catch " and " Yankee Gypsies," should be fully exploited. 
An early portrait of Whittier appears in the " Fable for Critics." 
Drake's " New England Legends " will throw a cross-light 
on many of the poems. The Abolition movement should be 
frankly discussed in all its bearings. See Professor Wendell's 
exposition of the conservative view taken, e.g., by Ticknor. A 
file, or even a single copy, of Garrison's Liberator, with its 
remarkably prophetic picture and startling headlines, will be 
found most instructive. " John Brown and the Negro Baby," 
"Barbara Frietchie," "Floyd Ireson, " supply perennial discus- 
sion. The personal poems supply much biographical and histor- 
ical suggestion. 



186 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



II. Lydia Maria Child 



(Francis) 

Child, 

1802-1880 



Whittier's friendships, as has been said, were 
especiall}' with women, who seemed better skilled to 
slip behind the guard of his shy reserve. Among 
them there were two, each of whom was in her time, 
doubtless, more widely read than any other authoress. 
Each hurled a firebrand into the fiercest social and 
political discussion our nation has ever known. Mrs. 
Stowe's name is still a household word. If the 
Lydia Maria 3'ounger generation are now forgetting Mrs. Child, 
it is their OAvn grievous loss, as well as ingratitude 
to one of their earliest literary benefactors. 

Born in the suburban village of Medford, near 
Boston, younger sister of the learned and liberal- 
minded Professor Convers Francis, she shared to the 
full all the best influences of Channing's and Emer- 
son's day. Her crude " Hobomok " and " The Reb- 
els," historical romances, had made her a general 
favorite at twenty-three. Her " Frugal Housewife " 
ran through more than thirty editions. Her Juve- 
nile Miscellany^ begun 1826, was the earliest fore- 
runner of Our Young Folks and St. Nicholas. 

In 1828 she married a Boston lawj'er. Both soon 
became ardent Garrisonians. In 1833, the year the 
Antislavery Society was born, her " Appeal in 
Behalf of that Class of Americans called Africans " 
was printed. It destroyed her career as an author, 
in the North hardl}^ less than in the South. Her 
tranquil, happy life became a battle ; for this first 
antislavery book held long, perhaps still holds, its 
position as the ablest direct argument ever made 



Hobomok, 

1821. 

The Rebels 

1822. 



THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 187 

against slavery in America. For many years almost 
all doors were shut to her or her books. 

From 1841 to 1849 the Childs edited the Anti- 
slavery Standard in New York. In 1852 they settled 
in Wayland, Massachusetts, and there lived happily 
twenty-two years, an idyllic life, without a servant. 
When John Brown lay wounded in prison, Mrs. Child 
wrote to him, in care of Governor Wise, offering to 
nurse him. The heated resulting correspondence 
made a printed pamphlet which had a circulation 
of three hundred thousand copies. In 1867 she pub- 
lished " Looking toward Sunset," a choice collec- 
tion of hopeful verse and prose on old age, from all 
literature. She had to the last a fearless word 
and an open purse for every reform : the more 
unpopular the better. 

As for the exact literary rank of this heroic woman, 
the critical scales must be passed to younger and 
cooler hands. In the homes of a few " original Gar- 
risonians " her early books were still cherished. We 
learned to read, that we might not be dependent on 
our busy elders for daily absorption in her " Flowers 
for Children." Our own offspring seem to detect a 
moral and Edgeworthian flavor in the cherished vol- 
ume, and prefer " Little Women." We first heard 
the very names of Pericles and Plato in her Greek 
romance "Philothea." "The Letters from New 
York " widened the vista of a village street to our 
boyish eyes. 

Though not successful in rhythmical utterance, 
Mrs. Child had much of the poet's nature. Her 
*' Philothea" is almost a rhapsody. Her firm faith in 
thought-transference, her half-belief in metempsy- 



188 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

chosis, her mystical and ideal tendencies generally, 
unite with the frugality of the Yankee housewife 
even more grotesquely, at times, than the similar 
mixture in Emerson ; and, like him, she is herself 
the first to laugh. Of all the picturesque figures 
among Transcendentalists and Abolitionists, there is 
perhaps not one so utterly lovable. Some of her 
books may yet regain their influence. Though we 
build fair monuments to the brave reformers whom 
our fathers shunned and stoned, yet the sudden 
neglect that then befell their purely artistic work 
has too often been allowed to darken into utter 
forgetfulness. 

Into Mrs. Child's early novel, "The Rebels," a 
supposed sermon by Whitefield and an oration by 
James Otis were inserted. The latter is still a 
favorite declamation for schoolboys, and is often 
printed as Otis's own words. 

To this chapter might have been added the discus- 
sion of the '^ Biglow Papers," and of many less fa- 
miliar works down to the time of Mrs. Howe's 
" Battle Hymn of the Republic." Garrison himself 
has a memorable record as orator, essayist, and even 
as an occasional writer of verse. There can be no 
question, however, what single book will be longest 
and most widely associated with the destruction of 
American slavery. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Mrs. Child's books are still published by Houghton or by 
Koberts. More ambitious than any mentioned in the text was 
the " Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages," 
3 vols., New York, 1885. 



THE LITERATUKE OF ABOLITION 189 

" A Romance of the Republic," Boston, 1867, is a picture of 
slavery by an Abolitionist, but softened by the feelings of a 
victor in strife. 

Short biographical sketches by T. W. Higginsou in " Emi- 
nent Women of the Age," by Susan Coolidge in " Our Famous 
Women," and by Whittier as introduction to her "Letters," 
Houghton, 1883. The latter volume contains also her funeral 
oration by Wendell Phillips. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE CLASSROOM 

No better center can be chosen for a study of the social and 
personal aspects of the Abolition movement. Besides the refer- 
ences given already, Whittier's life and letters, and poems, will 
supply helpful materials. Lowell is even warmer in his loves 
than in his hates, and his tribute to " Philothea," in the oft- 
cited " Fable," might well be learned by heart. 



III. Harriet Beecher Stowe 

There is certainly little apparent danger that this Harriet 
name will be forgotten. Mrs. Stowe was a member f^^^^^^^) 
of a remarkable family, and necessarily lived from Stowe, 
infancy in an atmosphere " surcharged with mental 
and moral enthusiasm." Controversy had no terrors 
for that dauntless fighting stock. Her father, Dr. Lyman 
Lyman Beecher, led the Puritanic and Calvinistic fy^y^^^^ 
reaction in Boston for six years (1826-1832), when 
nearly every other great preacher or scholar of Bos- 
ton and Cambridge was a Unitarian. He led aggres- 
sively and with large success. For twenty years 
thereafter, as head of Lane Seminary near Cincinnati, 
he lived on the very frontier of slavery, and the 
underground railway, as Mrs. Stowe once said, 
"ran through their house." Married in 1836 to her 
father's colleague, she saw Binney's press destroyed 
by a mob from Kentucky that very year. 



1811-1896. 



190 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

Mrs. Stowe was the poor and overtaxed mother of 
six children when they settled in Brunswick, Maine, 
in 1850. This was the year when Webster's Seventh 
of March Speech inspired Whittier's fearful lyric, 
" Ichabod," and the enactment of the Fugitive Slave 
Law seemed a deadly defeat for the antislavery 
men. In New England, as before in Ohio, she now 
saw the refugees from bondage, fleeing toward Can- 
ada as their sole hope. A strange apathy seemed to 
be settling over the whole Nortli. 

Mrs. Stowe, with all the pressure of family cares, 
had still wielded at times a facile though not a force- 
ful pen. There is a graphic and pathetically amus- 
ing scene in her kitchen, from the year 1838, in Mrs. 
Field's " Life of Mrs. Stowe " (pp. 98-101). Under 
no less distracting conditions, certainly, was her fa- 
mous book to take shape. It came from the most 
intense conviction of religious duty. A sister-in- 
law apparently threw the firebrand by writing : 
"Now, Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can, I 
would write something that would make this nation 
feel what an accursed thing slavery is." 

Under these conditions, as Mrs. Stowe always 
afterward believed, she was actually possessed, and 
The call to inspired, to write a panoramic drama of slavery, over 
whose unrolling scenes she exercised little if any 
personal control. All that she had seen and known, 
not excepting her own peculiarly close and tender 
home ties, entered into the soul of her work. It is 
undoubtedly true, that as to moral and religious 
character Uncle Tom is an ideal combination of all 
the whitest men she had ever known. Certainly he 
is not in any sense the natural product of slavery. 



write. 



THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 191 

which might indeed be glad to claim him, as decisive 
proof of its supreme efficacy in the molding of 
Christian perfection. But as a romance, the book 
surely has a right to an idealized, a superhuman 
hero. The local color is not at all that of an artist 
who has known and loved all her life Kentucky and 
Louisiana. She did endeavor to obtain, through 
Frederick Douglass, accurate details, for instance, of 
the tasks in the cotton fields. But the fire of her 
purpose burned too hotly to wait long for such 
material. 

Not a word had been written when in an instant, 
in February, 1851, the death of Uncle Tom flashed 
like a picture before her mind, as she sat at Com- 
munion. Written and read aloud that day, it threw her 
children of ten and twelve into convulsive sobbing. 
A similar triumph, as was remarked, and at about 
the same time, Hawthorne won with the " Scarlet 
Letter." 

In April the first section was ready, and sent 
to the National Era at Washington. Announced 
and planned to reach a dozen chapters and run 
for three months, it went on for a year. The 
swift-rising tide of excitement and applause from 
thousands of readers no doubt uplifted the weary 
and often desponding writer. To the idealist of 
any age or creed, all this is perfectly consistent with 
her later words : " I the author of ' Uncle Tom's 
Cabin ' ? No, indeed. The Lord himself wrote it, 
and I was but the humblest of instruments in his 
hand." 

Published in book form April 1, 1852, the work 
had a success absolutely unheard of. In one year. 



192 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



in this country alone, over three hundred thousand 
copies were sold. By midsummer the poor tired 
housewife, who had worried over a probable deficit 
of 1300 in the year's income, received a first check 
of 110,000 for the royalty. Thereafter she was 
the confidante of statesmen, and the honored guest 
of princes. It was but her due, and it never for 
an instant turned her shrewd Yankee brain. The 
contrast, however, with Mrs. Child's reward is al- 
most pitiful. In twenty years our world had moved, 
indeed. 

The book became at once the center of assault 
from all the friends of slavery. But it turned the 
tide of public opinion, roused the sleeping conscience 
of the churches, and of earnest folk generally, through- 
out the North and West, — was by no means without 
influence even in Dixie. When Lincoln first clasped 
Mrs. Stowe's hand in November, 1862, he said, " And 
is this the little woman that made this great war ? " 
No piece of writing done in America, save perhaps 
the Declaration of Independence or the Federalist^ 
can be compared, in the weight of its results, with 
this tale by an unpracticed, apparently unimagina- 
tive, distracted, and feeble woman. 

Only an idealist, one is tempted to say, only a 
Puritan, could have done such a work, in such 
a spirit. Its popularity has never abated. There 
is hardly a human speech into which it has not been 
translated. In many a state of the Union where a 
slave never breathed, strolling companies are still 
sent out every winter for the purpose of "Uncle 
Tomming," and the audiences never fail with their 
tribute of tears. 



THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 193 

Before such a success, literary criticism hardly 
dares raise its voice even in qualified admiration. 
All who toil in earnest with the pen must be thrilled 
with awe that such results have even once sprung 
from the word fitly spoken. And yet, the book is 
not, in form, a sermon, a political plea, or a legal 
document. A goodly supplement of such documents 
followed the story, indeed, a year or two later, but 
not one reader of " Uncle Tom " in a thousand has 
glanced at a word of it. The final question is not 
whether the tale is a truthful sketch of actual Southern 
life, but : " Is it art ? " Some day, some far-off, 
future day, when negro slavery is as remote as the 
Homeric methods of warfare, " Life Among the 
Lowly " will live, or be forgotten, purely on its 
merits as a work of imagination. 

I believe that Uncle Tom and Eva are as imper- 
ishable as Hector and Andromache. As long as 
human error and atonement are intelligible subjects 
of tragedy, as long as men need to be reminded that 
the innocent must suffer for the guilty, as long as 
tyrants torture and helpless creatures cringe, so long 
this dramatic romance will retain its power. Mrs. Lasting 
Stowe only knew, from the beginning, that both Eva ^hl^^elt^ 
and Uncle Tom must die ; she had no idea how they romance, 
were to perish. Eva dies of no disease, save the pre- 
cocious realization of misery and wrong, which she 
cannot set right. In other ways Shelby, Topsy, Sambo, 
St. Clair, Legree, and the rest, typify the deadly danger 
of men's souls in the grip of an unrighteous social 
organism. There was never the slightest intent — 
save to heighten by contrast the tragic scenes — to 
set forth the pleasanter sides, or the average reality, 



194 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

of Southern life. All materials were chosen and 
used to produce a tragic effect. This is the essence 
of the artistic aim, and also of the ethical purpose. 
Uncle Tom's world, or Lear's, is not the real world ; 
there is no room for happiness in it. 

Once started by Mr. Shelby's yielding to the 
tempter, the whole tragedy becomes inevitable. A 
happy ending is no more imaginable than for Mac- 
beth or Othello. What could longer life, fuller 
knowledge, bring to Eva but utter heartbreak in the 
fuller consciousness of the universal misery and of 
her own helplessness ? Set Uncle Tom free, and he 
merely ceases from that instant to typify a race in 
bondage. Both must die, that our pity and terror 
may be fully roused. 

It is interesting to note that the exaltation of 
spirit in which this task was done by Mrs. Stowe did 
not vanish with its detachment from her mind and 
hand. The rush of events toward the decisive death- 
struggle of civil war, which she had perceptibly hast- 
ened, carried her along with it. Once again at least, 
in her ringing address of 1862 to the women of Eng- 
land, she spoke singly as with the voice of the whole 
North. Many men believe that by those brave 
words she turned the tide, or at least started the 
current of truer feeling in the mother country, made 
intervention from Europe impossible, and so perhaps 
saved the Union from permanent disruption. 

Some critics consider one or another of the later 
stories better in literary quality than "Uncle Tom." 
But no later work of Mrs. Stowe did, or could conceiv- 
ably, approach in energy or effectiveness this master 
stroke. "Dred " (1856), or, by its later title, '' Nina 



THE LITERATURE OF ABOLITION 195 

Gordon" (1866), is in some portions a kindlier, 
perhaps a more realistic picture of actual Southern 
life ; but for such work we naturally must look to the 
children of the Southland itself ; indeed we have long" 
ago turned, with delight, to the loving work of such 
recent artists as Cable, Harris, and Page. 

"• The Pearl of Orr's Island " was happily begun, 
in 1853, under the inspiration of the most beautiful 
and romantic region on our Eastern coast; but the 
removal to Andover seems to have broken the charm 
too soon. The " Oldtown Folks " (1869) are quaint 
and genuine Yankees, but Miss Wilkins, Miss Fuller, 
Miss Jewett, Miss Brown, have peopled the world of 
fiction with a host of others, quite as satisfying. 
" Agnes of Sorrento " (1863) is a pure but pale 
reflection of George Sand. Of her American society 
novels, "The Minister's Wooing" (1859) is called 
the best. But Mrs. Stowe's fame will live with 
"Uncle Tom." 

"One, — but a lion," quoth ^sop's lioness. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Houghton is now Mrs. Stowe's f)ublisher, though her more 
famous books are reprinted widely by others. The '* Life " by 
C. E. Stowe (her son), 1889, Houghton, had some personal 
revision by Mrs. Stowe herself. The "Life and Letters" by 
Mrs. Fields, Houghton, 1897, is the complete and authentic 
story of her life. In the " Holiday " edition of " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin " is a catalogue of the editions which have appeared in 
various languages. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOiVI WORK 

Both lives of Mrs. Stowe have abundant materials for fuller 
treatment. The exact environment in which her sfreat book 



196 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

was planned and written will always be of real interest. Her 
later relations with the leading women and men of England is 
a less vital but interesting subject. The two controversies, as 
to the moral guilt of famous men, which embittered her later 
years, are intentionally omitted here as irrelevant and un- 
edifying. The account of her last public reception in 
June, 1882, with the poems read by Whittier, Holmes, and 
others, is effective (" Life " by C. E. Stowe, pp. 500-505, Mrs. 
Fields, pp. 380-381). Much fuller accounts can be found in the 
newspapers of that time. The chief work, however, is the care- 
ful study of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " itself. It may be helpful to 
place beside it Mrs. Mary H. Eastman's " Aunt Phillis's Cabin, 
or Southern Life as it is," written to correct Mrs. Stowe's errors. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 

I. Longfellow 

TO every young American, to nearly all men and Henry 
women of English speech the world around, ^^^^^'^w, 
the poet of '' Hiawatha " and " Evangeline," of " The I807-I882. ' 
Village Blacksmith" and "The Children's Hour," 
has been from their infancy a familiar friend. For 
at least a half-century his verse has hardly found a 
rival in the affections of the race. That very fact 
makes it the more difficult for us to see the greatness 
of his accomplished task, to trace the entire curve of 
a wonderfully rich and full career. Outworn and 
tattered now by endless repetition, long imitated, 
parodied, and at last, as we may fancy, outgrown by 
us, these familiar phrases and measures are really 
intermingled with our speech of daily life, with every 
memory and association. Their liquid clearness, 
simplicity, and music could be perfected only through 
long days of labor, and nights devoid of ease. Yet 
they were all created by one sensitive, modest, indus- 
trious man, amid the very distractions that fritter 
away our barren days, and countless others that 
sprang out of his fame, his patient courtesy, and the 
selfishness of his myriad unknown visitors and cor- 
respondents. Doubtless no life here chronicled has 
left richer results in human happiness. 

The ancestors of Longfellow lived long within 
197 



198 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

five miles of Thomas Whittier's farmhouse, with the 
Lowells almost as near. Yet it was his great-grand- 
father, a Harvard graduate, who was called to Port- 
land, Maine, as a teacher, in 1744. Henry's father was 
an honored lawyer, like the grandsire, a congressman 
in the boy's college days, and later president of the 
Maine Historical Society. Though Portland was a 
provincial seaboard town, the poet had more early stim- 
ulus to literary culture than Hawthorne in Salem. 
Self-exiled early, he loved his birthplace, without 
a trace of the irritation which the romancer sometimes 
betrays. "My Lost Youth," and " Clianged," express 
perfectly the feeling of the man for the happy abode 
of boyhood. 

Born in the same year with Whittier, he was at 
Bowdoin College, from 1821 to 1825, the classmate of 
Hawthorne. They did not discover any intimate 
sympathy for one another until much later in life. 
How Hawthorne spent these years we have seen. 
The Maine boy was three years younger, far less 
stalwart, fonder of the study and the library. '' The 
government of the college," he Avrites his father, 
" seeing that something must be done to induce the 
students to exercise, recommended a game of ball 
now and then. Nothing is now heard of in our 
leisure hours," he adds rather querulously, " but ball, 
ball, ball." Modern students may find this glimpse 
of early athletics hardly credible. But so late as 
1858 Dr. Holmes, a most competent observer, said, 
" Such a set of black-coated, stiff-jointed, soft- 
muscled, paste-complexioned youth as we can boast 
never before sprang from Anglo-Saxon lineage." 
That record is broken indeed. 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 199 

Young Longfellow, if not a bit of a prig, was an 
undoubted " dig," and earned his prompt reward. 
At eighteen, graduating fourth in rank among 
thirty-eight, he was promised a chair of modern 
languages, after a series of years should first be 
spent in study abroad. He sailed in May, 1826. 

His rhymes had even then long enjoyed a modest 
vogue. Seventeen poems had appeared in a single 
magazine, the Uriited States Literary Gazette of Bos- 
ton. Nearly all this boyish poetry was later sup- 
pressed. " The Burial of the Minnisink " has a 
certain interest, foreshadowing his great success with 
"Hiawatha." But the careful list of his published 
poems, in the Cambridge edition, reveals no line of 
orig-inal verse between 1826 and 1837. This is a 
notable example of wise reticence. Schiller remarked 
regretfully, of his immature tragedy, " The Robbers," 
" I undertook to portray men before I had known 
them." Longfellow, more promptly mute, devoted 
himself to prolonged and exhaustive study. 

The next three years were industriously spent in 
France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. To his Got- 
tingen professors he took personal letters from Tick- 
nor and Bancroft. The most cultivated Americans 
then living abroad, as the Irvings and Everetts, were 
his friends, and introduced him into the best Euro- 
pean society. But Longfellow was always at heart a 
student, most at home among books, eager to shut 
out the noises of the world as jangling discords. A 
passage in " Morituri Salutamus " reveals that this 
feeling was a lasting one. He had, at this early 
time, all the young man's delight to be 

" Abroad in the world, alone and free ; " 



200 THE NEW ENGLAND PEKIOD 

he was by no means blind to the scenery and the art 
of older lands : but what he has to relate to us about 
them seems always composed in a quiet library, in 
the full consciousness of whatever bards have sung, 
or travelers told, before him. 

This is doubtless what severer critics mean by call- 
ing Longfellow "academic." But surely, literary 
form is an art, which should be learned from its 
masters. That the true content of literature is the 
whole of human life, and that it is, therefore, the 
largest of sciences as well, he fully realized, and has 
often said. Still, it is true, that a certain bookish- 
ness never leaves him. We touch on it thus early, 
because it is a pervasive quality. His memories of 
travel, finally published as " Outre-Mer " in 1835, 
illustrate what has just been said : and reveal also 
the earnest purity and gentleness of a nature that 
was never embittered by the most grievous sorrows 
which life could bring. 

From 1826 to 1835 the years were spent quietly in 
teaching and writing, at Brunswick. He edited 
French, Spanish, and Italian books for his college 
classes, composed a French grammar, and another, 
in French, for beginners in Italian. His solid philo- 
logical essays in the North American Review were 
illustrated by many exquisite verse-translations from 
the Romance languages. This was a long and 
laborious apprenticeship. Longfellow's importance 
as an apostle of broader culture to an essentially pro- 
vincial folk can hardly be overstated. We must 
notice especially, however, the effect of this long 
course of " drawing from the antique," in Long- 
fellow's own clean-cut, transparent, seemingly effort- 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 201 

less style. The *' Skeleton in Armor" (1840) is as 
simple, perhaps, that is, as clearly phrased, as 
Whittier's " Barefoot Boy." So, indeed, is the 
"Saga of King Olaf." But the perfect mastery of 
forms so elaborate, especially in poetry upon such 
themes, was attainable only through yearlong scholarly 
study of other literatures. 

The one frank utterance of his own literary creed 
was made in an essay, " Defense of Poetry," in 1832. 
He openly deplores the morbid influence of Byron, 
and hails Wordsworth as the noblest singer of the 
time. He is heart and soul an idealist, but has begun 
to discover one of the great errors in his own earlier 
efforts. '' We wish our native poets would give 
a more national character to their writings. This is 
peculiarly true in descriptions of natural scenery. 
. . . Let us have no more skylarks and night- 
ingales." As he also regrets "the precocity of our 
writers," the allusion is pretty clearly to his own 
"Angler's Song" (1826) wherein 

" Upward speeds the morning lark 
To its silver cloud." 

Years later still, however, Margaret Fuller had oc- 
casion to remind him sharply that we know nothing 
and care nothing about the recurrence of Pentecost, 
or whether 

"Bishops' caps have golden rings." 

Despite the fragrant forest background throughout 
" Hiawatha," we do not feel that Longfellow ever 
acquired any such close familiarity as our other chief 
poets with outdoor sights and sounds. But if we 
must choose either alone, surely woods and fields are 



202 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

less interesting company than men and women: a 
truth Bryant, and even Wordsworth, too often 
forgot. 

Altogether, this essay clearly foreshadows the 
eventual return of Longfellow, with earnest moral 
and ideal aims, to creative poetical work. The 
critical faculty he never wished to cultivate. He 
sought out and utilized whatever in other literatures 
proved helpful to him. What he disapproved he 
silently avoided. 

He had married in 1831. In 1835-1836 he again 
spent eighteen months abroad, in preparation for the 
Smith professorship at Harvard, vacated at that time 
by George Ticknor. In November, 1835, his young 
wife died, in Holland. A brief mention of her 
occurs in " Footsteps of Angels." Next year he 
settled in Cambridge, lodging in Craigie House, 
afterward so closely associated with his fame. As 
Smith professor he had general oversight over four 
foreign instructors in languages, his heritage from 
Ticknor, — a discordant, unruly leash, as he intimates, 
— but himself only lectured once to thrice weekly. 
This chair he held until 1854. 

His first original poem, after a dozen years' silence, 
was " Flowers," sent with a bouquet to a friend, in 
October, 1837. The form is laborious, the general 
effect somewhat cold and scentless. The true and 
full return of the poetic impulse occurred the next 
year, when the " Psalm of Life " forced its way to 
eager and instant, even somewhat crude, utter- 
ance. It at once aroused wide attention, and came 
like a bugle-call to many a desponding soul. It is 
full of energy and hope, yet avowedly didactic, 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 203 

moral, Puritanical. Longfellow called many poems 
of this period psalms, and is himself the " psalmist " 
meant in the subtitle of this one. 

He still wrote prose, but it is the prose of a poet. 
His lectures have not been published, doubtless were 
not as a rule written out. His chief romance, 
" Hyperion," printed in 1839, is full of memories 
from the last lonely year abroad. Mary Ashburton, 
however, is drawn after the life, from Frances Apple- 
ton, whom he met in Switzerland, August, 1836, and 
was destined to marry, in 1843. Ten years later 
still (1849) the rather slight and pallid novelette 
" Kavanagh " appeared ; but long before that time 
Longfellow's life allegiance to poetry was fully 
assured. Indeed even that little book is full of 
sympathetic art criticism. 

The first collected volume of verse, " Voices of the 
Night," was issued also in 1839. A certain dainty 
and cloying sweetness, even in the title, recalls still 
the facile rhymer of college days, and reminds us of 
Tennyson's early work. It is interesting to note 
that the full vigor of the new lyric poet is first heard 
in " Wreck of the Hesperus^'''' December, 1839, and 
" Skeleton in Armor," 1840, both poems of the sea. 
The especial force and vividness of Longfellow's 
work on this theme has been often remarked, notably 
by so virile a critic as Mr. KijDling, in his sketch, 
"The Best Story in tlie World." Yet, compared 
with the Viking rapture of Kipling's own " Last 
Chantey," or the vagabond's note that floats from 
his black Bilbao tramp-steamer, — 

" With her loadline over her hatch, dear lass, 
And her drunken Dago crew," 



204 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



Sea poetry. 



Reticence 
of the poet. 



Longfellow oftener seems but a timid landsman, 
studying the ocean from his cottage door at Nahant. 
Indeed, the Hesperus poem was written at the pro- 
fessorial fireside in Cambridge, and based merely 
upon a newspaper account. The poet had never 
even seen the reef of Norman's Woe. 

The second marriage of Longfellow, in 1843, was 
the culmination of his prosperity. As a part of her 
dower his wife brought him the title-deeds of Craigie 
House, famous already as Washington's old head- 
quarters. One of his few odes, " To a Child " 
(1845), unites for us the two chief memories of the 
mansion. This child must be his eldest son, who 
was severely wounded eighteen years later, as a 
soldier in the Civil War. Another son and three 
daughters were born in Craigie House. In July, 
1861, his home happiness was blasted by his wife's 
tragic death. Always prone to occasional melan- 
choly, he never recovered from this blow. Yet the 
vrorld was the gainer for his suffering, as the deeper 
tenderness in his later work abundantly reveals. 

His flights of lyrics continued, hardly interrupted 
for a single year, as long as he lived. They rarely 
make direct allusion to his closest human ties. His 
children's mother, like the wife of his youth, appears 
once only, in the sonnet, " Evening Star." His 
daughters' names occur in the favorite " Children's 
Hour." The later sonnet, " A Shadow," has no 
personal details. 

Far more intimate utterances, indeed, in poetic 
form, the poet made, we are told, but not for our 
ears. In particular, the most pathetic of sonnets, 
"The Cross of Snow," not written until eighteen 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 205 

years after the bereavement, was found in his port- 
folio subsequent to his death. We may recall that 
Whittier promptly suppressed his own early prayer 
for fame. So Longfellow wrote, at thirty-five, " Mezzo 
Cammin," but never printed it. It is interesting to 
notice that the sonnet form had become the most 
natural means for expressing his innermost feelings. 
No wonder that his more exoteric verses show all 
but uniformly faultless workmanship. In nearly 
every English meter his work is an accepted model 
of form. 

In the refusal to give the world his fullest utter- 
ances of personal sentiment, this poet is in striking 
contrast with his friend Lowell, whose " After the 
Burial " and " First Snowfall " show an intensity of 
feeling, a rugged frankness, never approached by the 
elder singer's more silvery music. As in Hawthorne's 
case, Longfellow the artist dwelt apart from the man, 
in a close-bolted chamber, whither the actual events 
of daily life were rarely brought, save as mere sug- 
gestions for work of universal human interest. 

Still, the happiness of Craigie House is breathed 
into a thousand such verses as 

" Each man's chimney is his Golden Milestone." 

" The Two Angels " may have been composed on the 
very day (October 27, 1853) when his second daugh- 
ter was born and Lowell's young wife died; but only 
their own little circle held the key to its allusions. 
*' Weariness," " Resignation," " The Bridge," " My 
Books," and other lyrics might bid us further qualify 
the assertion as to Longfellow's reticence. Yet we 
feel that each is more a finished piece of art, or an 



206 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

utterance of humanity's cry, than an impulsive self- 
confession. Poems of friendship, so common with 
Whittier and Holmes, hardly appear at all : the trib- 
utes to Hawthorne and Taylor dead, and the franker 
one left at the living Lowell's gate, stand almost 
alone, until in his later years he misses such links 
in the old circle as Sumner, Agassiz, and Felton. 

Hatred or fierce disapproval he never utters, per- 
haps never felt. " Ichabod," or " John P. Robinson," 
he could not have written. Political poetry was 
hardly possible for him. Once, on a sea voyage, he 
wrote a little sheaf of lyrics against slavery, which 
were omitted from the next general edition. 

The sonnet on President Garfield's death is glori- 
fied by a verse cited from Dante's " Paradiso," 

" And came through martyrdom unto this peace." 

This may serve to remind us how scholarly and 
world-wide in range Longfellow's art was. An Ice- 
landic Edda, David's bereavement or Bartimeus's 
faith, Diirer's home and Walter von der Yogelweide's 

grave, 

" Old legends of the monkish page, 
Traditions of the saint and sage," 

furnish equally fit suggestion for song. We can cite 
indeed from him the verse, 

" That is best which lieth nearest ; 
Shape from that thy work of art ! " 

but that very poem bears the name of a forgotten 
Spanish artist. The international and scholarly 
quality of the lyrist's art is heightened by his many 
translations. His " Luck of Edenhall," " Wanderer's 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 20T 

Night Song," "Remorse," seem at least to equal the 
originals, perfect as they are. 

Least adequately represented are the great myths 
of Hellas. This charge indeed lies against our 
creative national literature as a whole, and is too 
large a subject to discuss in detail here. Of intimate 
acquaintance with Homer, the Attic dramatists, 
Plato, there is hardly a vestige, less than in almost 
any great British poet of the same century, incom- 
parably less than in Shelley or Keats, Tennyson and 
Swinburne. The resolve, in 1839, to "take to the 
Greek poets again," only led him to reread a few of 
the clever but uninspired pseudo- Anacreontics in his 
old college text-book, the "Grseca Majora." Doubt- 
less the causes of this lack are to be traced back to 
our classical scholarship and collegiate teaching, in 
which the true humanities have never had due honor. 

In " Mezzo Cammin " the poet alludes to his crav- 
ing, unsated as yet, 

"to build ''The fever 

to accom- 
Some tower of song with lofty parapet." plish some 

great 

Though he has not created a great national epic or an work." 
unquestioned masterpiece of drama, he has made 
most important advances in both these directions. 

The congenial subject of "Evangeline "came to him " Evange- 
as a gift, perhaps a half -reluctant gift, from Haw- ^^°®'" ^^^'^' 
thorne, who first heard the tradition, but could 
hardly have used it so happily. Less than fifteen 
hundred lines in length, and containing no real 
struggle or pivotal action, this poem is at most an 
idyl, not even a miniature epic. Its pathos and 
purity, the natural sentiment, the large scenic back- 



208 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

grounds, help to explain the universal love for this 
poem. 

But it is also true, that the long, sweeping cadences 
of our English accentual hexameter, though so 
generally distasteful to the Greek or Latin scholar, 
delight the popular ear. The musical effects of 
Hesiod or Lucretius, not to mention Virgil and 
Homer, are absolutely unattainable in Englisli. 
Dactyls indeed, though not easy in our crisp iambic 
speech, are still possible. But while the vowels are 
essentially the same, as to number and quality, in 
ancient or modern hexameters, not even nonsense- 
verses can be put together, containing less than 
twice the average number of consonantal sounds 
found in the liquid speech of Hellas or Rome. That 
is a condition not to be escaped in any English verse, 
nor indeed in any Teutonic speech. Our dactyls 
should be criticised only as compared with other 
forms of English metrical composition: e.g. with the 
anapaests of Lochinvar. 

"Hiawatha" is a true epic, with a hero. His 
earthly life is more completely delineated, indeed, 
from its beginning to its end, than Odysseus', or 
Arthur's. The material was fresh to the poet's first 
readers, and is of lasting interest, especially to us in 
America. This poem is the most novel contribution 
of Longfellow to the world's literature. It does 
not reveal a wonderfully intimate knowledge of 
Indian life and character. The original materials, 
though faithfully collected, were treated with absolute 
freedom. 

This is all as it should be. A true poem cannot 
be utilized as a mine of archgeological lore. The 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 209 

" Iliad " resists such attempts, with all but perfect 
success. Whether Hector's chariot, Arthur's sword, 
Hiawatha's canoe, ever had an earthly existence 
is immaterial. They, and their possessors, justify 
themselves by their perennial charm to each new 
generation; but that charm is purely human and 
universal, not dependent on race or local setting. 
Perhaps, at times, as in the love scenes, Hiawatha 
shows too much chivalric sentiment and modern 
refinement. But every artist must describe life from 
his own experience and environment. Shakespeare's 
" C3^mbeline " is Elizabethan. Quentin Durward is 
a young eighteenth-century gentleman, in character 
and manners : Scott knew no others. So Longfellow 
had little inner acquaintance with Indian nature. 

The simple trochaic cradle-swing of this poem was 
borrowed from a Finnish epic, the "Kalevala." It 
suits perfectly the rather naive folk and natural 
scenery of the tale. This verse is by no means so easy 
to compose as it seems, and has never been used with 
notable success by a later hand. This is perhaps a 
pity, since our longer narrative poetry should be 
fully emancipated from the tyranny of recurrent end- 
rhyme, which is, in our speech, though not in Italian 
or mediaeval Latin, a grievous bar to natural utter- 
ance. Probably very few words were kept out of 
Hiawatha by the meter. 

Neither of these poems is truly national. At least, 
they arouse no patriotic pride. Rather they have a 
certain elegiac pathos, reminding us how completely 
both the Indian and the Acadian life perished under 
our sires' ruthless hands. More directly patriotic is 
" Miles Standish," which deals with the love affairs 



210 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



of Longfellow's own ancestors, John and Priscilla 
Alden. The hexameter is there handled more 
lightly, even sportively at times. The general effect 
is bright and sunny, in itself perhaps a miracle, 
when worked upon our somber early annals. But 
here again it would be a grave error either to accept 
or to criticise the poem merely or chiefly as an his- 
toric chronicle. We must never wholly forget that 
the poet's Plymouth is, at his will, an Arcadian port, 
whose casements open on the seas of Fairyland. 
L- Longfellow returned to the hexameter once again 

1873. ^^ u Elizabeth," a Quaker replica of Priscilla. He is 
somewhat lax in using very heavy syllables in the 
unaccented part of his dactyls, which are therefore 
themselves, at times, 

" Bent like a laboring oar." 

The best English examples of the measure are found, 
rather, in Charles Kingsley's '' Andromeda." 

Though even less familiar than Tennyson with the 
actual requirements of the theater, Longfellow made 
assiduous efforts to construct his greatest works in 
dramatic form. The "Spanish Student" has the 
charm of youth and light-hearted love, with pleasant 
local color. " Pandora," his chief Hellenic venture, 
does not justify itself, as a whole, by any larger or 
novel restatement of the Promethean myth, and soon 
becomes in the reader's memory a loose-strung series 
of fine lyric passages. "Judas Maccabeeus" is re- 
membered chiefly for one powerful scene, portraying 
the triumphant despair of the mother whose seven 
heroic sons accept martyrdom without blenching. 
" Michael Angelo," the congenial task of Longfel- 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 211 

low's old age, was hardly intended to be completed, 
much less really put upon the boards. Rather do 
its soliloquies and dialogues form a commonplace 
book, in which are set down the ripest thoughts of 
the scholarly poet upon his own craft and the other 
fine arts. Indeed, the best of literary and art criti- 
cism abounds in these calm pages. Many such allu- 
sions as that to 

" The fever to accomplish some great work, 
That will not let us sleep," 

seem plainly subjective. 

The largest dramatic work of Longfellow remains 
to be discussed. In his thirty-fifth summer, just 
when " Mezzo Cammin " was written, there appears " Mezzo 
in his notebook the brief outline for " Christus, a ^^'^''''" 
dramatic poem in three parts." It was a vast under- 
taking, "the theme of which would be the various 
aspects of Christendom in the Apostolic, Middle, and 
Modern Ages." 

The second section, the "Golden Legend," appeared " Golden 
earliest in 1851. The central story, of Elsie's ^gfr^^'" 
sacrifice, is happily characteristic of the mediaeval 
age, but the prominence of Lucifer is hardly justi- 
fied, to our incredulous modern minds. Many 
scenes are but loosely connected even with Prince 
Henry's long journey to Salerno. Altogether, the 
work is a wonderfully broad picture of mediaeval life, 
perhaps the richest fruit of Longfellow's scholarship 
and poetic imagination combined. 

In the "New England Tragedies" Mr. Longfellow "New 
comes into indirect rivalry with his friend Haw- JE^^^^J? „ 

^ ^ Tragedies, 

thorne, whose ancestor, also, is a character in " Giles 1868. 



212 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



Corey." The scenes are vivid and painful, wrought 
far more strenuously than those of " Miles Standish." 
Of course they do not in any large sense represent 
the spirit of modern Christianity, but simply reveal 
the two darkest pages in local Massachusetts annals. 
Real dramas they are not, for there is no true cul- 
mination, nor even an heroic struggle. 

The " Divine Tragedy " handles a subject which 
most men consider unsuitable for poetic or other 
freely imaginative treatment. Longfellow here felt 
much constraint, and often has merely thrown an 
evangelist's record into rather rough blank verse, 
with the least possible change of phrase. The inten- 
tion is undoubtedly reverent, but the whole effect is 
hardly equal to that of the simple and quaint miracle- 
play included in the "Golden Legend." 

As a whole, " Christus " attempts a subject hope- 
lessly large for artistic and unified presentation. The 
term " trilogy " perhaps aided to mislead the gentle 
lyric singer into so vast an effort. But the Pro- 
methean trilogy of ^schylus must have contained, 
in all its three plays, — or more truly, acts, — less 
than five thousand lines, which could all be said or 
sung within a short half-day. The " Golden Legend " 
alone contains quite that number of verses. The 
entire " Christus," with the beautiful interludes, is 
thrice as long. 



The capstone of the translator's labors was the 
great line-for-line version of Dante's entire '' Com- 
media," with copious notes. These volumes are still 
the best in English for students who wish to master 
the ideas of Dante. The eleven-syllable verse of 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 213 

the original makes a most natural unit of measure 
for sentence and thought, which is quite lost in Mr. 
Norton's faultless prose rendering. Mr. Parsons's 
incomplete rhymed translation, though masterly, is 
naturally far less faithful than the others. 

Much of Mr. Longfellow's work, not precisely 
translation, is, nevertheless, interpretative of other 
literatures. We have alluded to the miracle-play in 
the "Golden Legend," and to the "Saga of Olaf." 
Neither ans^vers to a single foreign original, but 
each is a more perfect illustration of an unfamiliar 
type than any mere version could be. He is doubt- 
less the most popular interpreter of literature in 
general that ever lived. Of course, in drawing his 
plots, suggestions, figures of speech, etc., from all 
available sources, Longfellow was but following in 
Shakespeare's own footprints, as he gracefully re- 
marks in an interlude of the "Wayside Inn." The 
general frame and plan of the latter book, again, was 
clearly influenced by the " Canterbury Tales," though 
the superior genius of Chaucer is frankly confessed 
in the sonnet, "Woodstock Park." The form of 
" Building of the Ship " and " Keramos " is taken 
from Schiller's ''Song of the Bell." In our own 
literature both types seemed novelties. 

In these last poems, and still more in " Hanging 
of the Crane," the easy changes of meter, as the 
current of the tale quickens or lingers, are remark- 
able. In general Longfellow's metrical work will 
reward careful study, and offers examples of nearly 
every measure possible in English verse. 

Longfellow's old age was peculiarly beautiful. 
His gift of perfect expression remained to the last. 



214 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

" From my Armchair," written at seventy -two, is 
perhaps the happiest proof of this. The close of 
" Morituri Salutamus " is sadder, yet nowise em- 
bittered. 

We get at times even an impression of excessive 
amiability and gentleness in Longfellow. We almost 
wish for one fiercer strain, to show him a good hater, 
if only of injustice or cruelty. But his art, at all 
events, if not his life, was unclouded in its serenity. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The only complete edition of Longfellow's works is the River- 
side, Houghton, poetry, 6 vols., prose, 5 vols. For the poems 
the Cambridge edition, 1 vol., is entirely sufficient. It con- 
tains a remarkably good brief biography by H. E. Scudder. The 
life, by Samuel Longfellow, has copious extracts from the jour- 
nals. The life by Francis H. Underwood is also based on per- 
sonal knowledge. See also " Henry Wa<isworth Longfellow " by 
W. S. Kennedy, Lothrop. Higginson's '< Old Cambridge," E. E. 
Hale's " Lowell and his Friends," Curtis's Orations, Vol. IIL 

For all the chief New England authors, Howells's " Literary 
Friends " and Stillman's " Autobiography " are of value. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOM WORK 

Almost any one of the longer poems may be made the basis 
of special discussion or study. Thus " Hiawatha " brings up all 
our Lidian literature, from Leatherstocking to Ramona, with 
the real red man himself. " Miles Standish " may be illuminated 
from Winthrop's diary, " Pandora " compared with Hesiod's and 
other ancient accounts, "John Endicott" read beside Haw- 
thorne's " Gentle Boy," and " Giles Corey " with the histories 
of the Salem witchcraft (especially C. W. Upham, Boston, 
1867). "Michael Angelo " could be delightfully illustrated 
from familiar works of art. A mere catalogue of the sources 
from which the poet drew his plots and suggestions would 
be profitable. A special study of his classical allusions will be 
found in the Chautauquan for February, 1900. 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 215 



II. Holmes 

We perhaps first think of Dr. Holmes as a mere Oliver 
humorist. Certainly we come to know him, early ^oimet^ 
in our lives, through the " September Gale," or the 1809-1894. 
"One-Hoss Shay." Even Hosea Biglow, and all 
the brilliant scholars, wits, and poets, who gathered 
monthly in the " Saturday Club," used often to sit in 
silent delight while 

" Holmes's rockets curved their long ellipse, 
And burst in seeds of fire that burst again 
To drop in scintillating rain." 

But wit that holds such a circle entranced can be 
but the sparkle on the surface, over a deep current 
of serious wisdom. The "Autocrat" himself once 
says, almost sternly : — 

" Think not I come, in manhood's fiery noon, 
To steal his laurels from the stage buffoon. 
His sword of lath the harlequin may wield ; 
Behold the star upon my lifted shield I " 

His wit, then, like his ever fresh variety of theme and 
style, only lightens our own serious task, which must 
be to understand the main purposes and fruits of an 
earnest, laborious, and beneficent life. His char- 
acter was complex, and strange, rare gifts of genius 
crowded each other in the teeming brain of that 
sallow, quiet-faced, asthmatic little man. Of all 
authors he has perhaps best obeyed the injunction : — 
"Look thou into thy heart, and write." 

He was in truth "his own Boswell." 

Born in Cambridge, close beside the college, on 
Commencement Day of 1809, the poet of the famous 



216 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

Harvard class of '29 lived to see his birthplace swept 
away, in our time, to make room for the new law 
school. His first landscape included a glimpse of 
the great Washington Elm across the common ; and 
big trees were one of his lifelong special studies. 
Lovers of the Autocrat will recall especially his 
" apple-pie " wedge from a hemlock, showing its 
three hundred and forty-two annual rings : which 
were used by him, of course, as were the abandoned 
cells of the nautilus, to point a philosophic moral. 

The very year after graduation the youth of 
twenty-one leaped into national notice, with the 
fiery lyric which saved Old Ironsides from destruc- 
tion. After an attempt at studying law young 
Holmes found his forte in medicine, and later spent 
three years in foreign study, chiefly at Paris. With 
the best medical and surgical training, but else little 
influenced by France and Italy, he returned to pass 
the rest of his long life in Boston. He practiced 
medicine, with fair success despite his local repute 
as wit and poet. He was most happily married in 
1840. In 1847 he was elected professor in the 
Harvard Medical School. His lectures there, on 
anatomy, continued until 1882, and are remembered 
by his old students as the most delightful and spar- 
kling of accurate 'scientific demonstrations. 

His poetic vein ran steadily but not very copiously. 
His chosen model was Pope, particularly the " Iliad " ; 
his favorite meter the clashing ten-syllable couplet. 
The prevailing tone of this early verse is light. Even 
his beloved stethoscope and microscope are sung 
" Rhymed ^j^ merry rhymes. His lonsfer ventures, like the 

Lesson, ' j j q ' 

1846. " Rhymed Lesson," — a lesson in manners, speech. 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 217 

etc., — are hardly poems at all, but mild specimens 
of social satire, survivals of eighteenth-century 
English taste. He won early his position as the 
Occasional Poet of Boston. For reunions, anniver- 
saries, receptions to distinguished strangers, his 
graceful verses and yet more graceful recitation of 
them became indispensable. The annual class songs 
for Harvard College '29 began in 1851; and it is in- 
teresting to note that in the last gathering of sur- 
vivors, when only three met under Dr. Holmes's roof, Samuel 
one was a classmate named Smith, better distinguished s^th ^ 
as the author of '^ America." 1808-1895. 

In 1852 Dr. Holmes became a most acceptable 
Lyceum lecturer. His favorite subject was literary 
criticism, and a series of lectures on English poets 
of the early eighteenth century really anticipated 
closely our University Extension methods. Each 
lecture closed with an original poem, the one on 
Shelley being a wonderful series of vivid pictures 
from stanza to stanza. 

But Dr. Holmes's fame was as yet mainly provincial, 
almost local. His life itself seemed settled in a com- 
paratively narrow groove. Such early gems as " Old 
Ironsides " and " Last Leaf " were apparently his 
best hope of any enduring fame. Even as a wit, 
Hosea Biglow, ten years his junior, was far more 
widely known. But in 1857 Mr. Lowell himself was 
largely instrumental in changing all this. 

The Atlantic MontJily^ founded in that year, pro- First num- 
vided for the first time a permanent, dignified, and ^Jti ^^u 
profitable market for the best literature of the North- Monthly, 
east. That it was fully accepted as a national organ ^^vember, 
we may hesitate to claim, especially for the period 



218 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

before the Civil War. It was avowedly a mouth- 
piece for antislavery agitation and other reforms, as 
indeed the choice of Mr. Lowell for editor plainly 
indicated. Yet his first condition of acceptance was 
that Dr. Holmes should be the leading contributor to 
the first volume. With some persuasion this was 

" Autocrat," brought about, and the " Autocrat " was the result. 

?.^i^- .. The breakfast table books — the " Professor " and 

"Professor, 

1860. the " Poet " being later pressing of the same grapes 

'i8TO^*' — almost created a new form of literature. Or 

rather, this miscellany, monologue of prose and verse, 
of punning and preaching, of technical learning and 
common sense, is as nearly as possible the full self-ex- 
pression of a remarkably independent, healthy, keen- 
eyed social philosopher. The high-pitched voice of 
Dr. Holmes is still heard, no matter who is nominally 
speaking. Even " Little Boston's " most audacious 
braggadocio about the Hub is quizzically sincere. 
The whole effect is doubtless as close an approach to 
the real and wonderful talk, not indeed of the 
breakfast table, but of the Saturday Club, as was 
attainable in literary form. 

There is usually as little as may be of dreamy 
idealism. Almost every word is aimed straight at 
the ear and mind of '' practical " folk. In general 
Dr. Holmes was conservative, especially in his politi- 
cal and social ideas. A certain aristocratic liking 
for old families and inherited culture, for moderate 
wealth and city luxury, he naively confesses, as in the 
poem "Contentment." Big trees, fast horses, rowing 
shells, and all his other quaint and curious fads, come 
to mention soon or late. His two hetes noires were 
homoeopathy and Calvinism. In the attack on the 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 219 

theology of Edwards, in behalf of a happier belief as 
to man's essential nature and future destiny, he was 
perhaps rightly accounted a radical, though he him- 
self always adhered devoutly to the rather lax epis- 
copacy of his beloved King's Chapel. 

All these topics come into the chat of the breakfast 
room, with constant veering from grave to gay and 
nimbly back again. The "Autocrat" contains also a 
fine outburst of poetry, including the " Deacon's Mas- 
terpiece," the " Chambered Nautilus," which was the 
doctor's own favorite, and also " The Living Tem- 
ple," a description of the human frame, wherein poet 
and physiologist are united as never before in any 
work of literature. 

Thus, when close upon his fiftieth year. Dr. Holmes 
rose suddenly into a place among the half-dozen fore- 
most favorites of the American public. International, 
to any such extent as Irving's or Cooper's, Longfel- 
low's or Mrs. Stowe's, his fame has never grown. A 
home-loving home-keeping Bostonian he always re- 
mained. Widest culture in literature and science, 
his later as his early visits abroad, summer migra- 
tions or winter lecture tours, only renewed and 
invigorated this local loyalty. 

His two important novels, " Elsie Venner " and " Elsie 
" Guardian Angel," are to be included in the same X,^^^®^'" 
wonderful period of swift production. They reveal "Guardian 
the thoughtful physician, for they discuss the great fg^^'" 
problem of heredity. Elsie Venner is a monstrous, 
perhaps an impossible being, affected in all her traits 
and actions by the nature of a rattlesnake, from 
whose bite her mother had suffered before her birth. 
Myrtle Hazard, in the " Guardian Angel," is a normal 



220 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

and essentially noble nature. The perversities that 
arise and pass off in succession during her youth- 
time are ascribed, by the wise nonagenarian village 
doctor, merely to her rather diverse and warring 
ancestral legacies of impulse and inclination. This 
latter story is naturally the happier, but Elsie is a 
creation of uncanny, almost demoniac, power over 
our imagination. 

Dr. Holmes was perhaps at bottom a theologian 
most of all. His scientific studies, in the widest 
sense, were but part of a quest for the great First 
Cause, the divine source of life. Hence in both these 
stories, as the author himself frankly says, the chief 
problem after all is the moral responsibility of the man, 
or woman, for acts and thoughts really thrust upon 
each of us by all the past of our kin and race, by all 
the influences that create our life. 

Even in these tales, also, there is often a long 
stretch of the familiar table-talk, while the story is 
all but forgotten. In general they are not master- 
pieces of construction. Dr. Holmes could draw 
living characters, he even could paint an exquisitely 
lifelike scene, such as his masterpiece, the party in 
" Elsie Venner," but he could not create and control 
a masterly plot. The story itself is generally con- 
ventional, often too transparent to the experienced 
story-reader, or again, at times, forced and incredi- 
ble in its melodramatic coincidences. 

The lives of Motley (1879) and Emerson (1884) 
are based on exhaustive study, and show unexpected 
capacity to understand the character and work of 
men remote from himself in type, though bound to 
him by ties of close personal friendship. Especially 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 221 

is this true of Emerson. Dr. Holmes never affiliated 
at all with the Transcendentalists. He had ridi- 
culed Emerson's " Sphinx " in unmistakable fashion, in 
verse. He shrank from radical reform, feeling the 
full force of that tradition, convention, social usage, 
to which Emerson was so calmly indifferent. He 
was as little an idealist as any true poet can be. 
Instead of solitude and contemplation, he loved 
above all things congenial society, discussion, con- 
versation. Of course, such a man's view of Emerson 
was an outside one after all, yet it is accurate, vivid, 
even sympathetic in tone. 

Dr. Holmes's conservatism included a strong dis- 
like of Abolition, as a menace to the peaceful contin- 
uance of the union. When John Quincy Adams 
made his heroic stand in old age for freedom of 
speech on the floor of Congress, even he was included 
with the Garrisonians in the denunciation : — 

" Chiefs of New England ! by your sires' renown 
Dash the red torches of the rebel down ! 
Flood his black hearthstone till its flames expire, 
Though your old Sachem fanned his council-fire ! " 

This was in 1846. Ten years later his verses on 
Daniel Webster traverse sharply the position of 
Whittier in " Ichabod." Of course the great crisis of 
the Civil War brought these two poets much closer 
together politically, as they had long been in personal 
friendship, and gave a very different association to 
the word rebel. Yet it is curious that these two, so 
wide apart in all outward relations, remained at last 
sole survivors of the old circle, and when long past 
eighty still cheered each other upward to the snow 
line. 



222 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

The permanent arc of Dr. Holmes in our litera- 
ture will perhaps not be large. His best work is 
often in a sense controversial. Much of his wit is 
localized, as it were, in time and space, and will not 
be intelligible, is not, indeed, intelligible, to remote 
readers. This is, of course, especially true of his 
prose. 

His poetry is in form as faultless as Longfellow's, 
though cast in fewer and simpler metrical schemes. 
His lyrical masterpieces are very brief, and perhaps 
not numerous. Most of them have been casually 
mentioned, at least, already. We may close as we 
began, acknowledging that his rich, rare, all but 
omnipresent humor will be gratefully remembered. 
But his best work is never merely humorous. Even 
the wittiest of all, the " Deacon's Masterpiece," has a 
few more serious notes, like : — 

" Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, 
Deacon and deaconess passed away, 
Children and grandchildren, where were they ? " 

In reading the " Last Leaf " we can never keep the 
smile and the tear apart. The " Organ Blower " is 
more cheerful, yet has some tones as deep as the 
organ-bass itself. In this pathetic power Holmes at 
times recalls Hood. But, like him. Dr. Holmes at 
other times refuses to smile at all. " Old Ironsides" 
at once illustrates this ; but mature years, of course, 
brought infinitely deeper feeling. In " The Voice- 
less " the intense throb of the singer's own pulse-beats 
becomes actually painful to the absorbed listener. 
Longfellow's " Poet and his Songs " is light-hearted 
by comparison, and even in Lowell we must seek its 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 223 

like in utterances of the man, not of the artist, in 
bereavement. That Hohnes in poetry can even be 
idealistic may perhaps be best shown by his noble 
''Musa." It should be lovingly compared with 
Lowell's " Envoi to the Muse," Whittier's " Vanish- 
ers," Emerson's " Forerunners " : for it recalls a con- 
fession which every true poet must some time make, 
that their best inspiration is never quite uttered 
aright. 

There are clever books of Dr. Holmes to which 
we have not yet even alluded. Even the garrulous " Over the 
"Over the Teacups " and rather trivial belated novel JggT"^^'" 
" A Mortal Antipathy " have their peculiar interest. " A Mortal 
The many-sided life of the man cannot even be ^'^^*^^''* 
sketched here. His early research as to the conta- 
giousness of certain fevers has saved countless pecul- 
iarly precious lives. At some cost of strife and brief 
obloquy for himself, he has created, more perhaps 
than any other American, the absolutely free atmos- 
phere for theological and scientific discussion which 
we now enjoy. 

Such great services are, of course, essential in any 
real appreciation of the man and citizen, but our 
main concern here is with the artist. We may con- 
cede, then, that his creative and permanent work is 
small in amount. But it is absolutely stainless in 
moral quality, perfect in style, lucid, simple, and 
so original that it usually contains no hint of masters 
or teachers. This alone would suffice to deserve our 
fullest gratitude, and the confident hope that his 
name and fame may yet long abide. 



224 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Holmes's " Works," Riverside edition, Houghton, 14 vols. 
"Life," by John T. Morse, Jr., Houghton, 2 vols. Howells's 
« Literary Friends," Part V. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOM WORK 

In " Elsie Venner " will be found excellent additions to the 
Yankee dialect of Hosea Biglow. The personal poems ad- 
dressed to and written by Dr. Holmes reveal a network of inti- 
mate personal friendships. His biography of Emerson, his reply 
to Lowell's early letter of criticism on his conservatism, his 
lasting friendship with Whittier, suggest effective contrasts of 
character. 



III. Lowell 

Though both Whittier and Holmes survived him, 
it is generally felt that with Lowell culminated that 
movement in national literature which had been led 
by Bryant and Emerson. Indeed, his character and 
career stamp the whole epoch with a clearer meaning 
and unity. Irving, Cooper, and their friends wrote 
mainly to give pleasure, to divert themselves and 
others from the too serious affairs of life. Poe, how- 
ever unique, was at one with the Knickerbockers 
in their detestation of the strenuous, didactic, preach- 
ing spirit of Puritanism. In this solemn view of life 
and all its uses, however, even men else so divergent 
as Holmes and Emerson, Whittier and Hawthorne, 
are almost exactly alike. Their art never exists for 
its own sake, but for man, for God, for truth. It is 
illuminating to notice that in orthodox hymn books, 
where Poe, surely, would tap in vain, an alien visitor 
from the midnight darkness, our Yankee poets, liberal 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 225 

and even lax as was their own theology, are largely- 
represented. Lowell, born a full decade after the 
quartette just named, is the avowed disciple of them 
all ; yet he had a vigorous, independent, and complex 
nature, which demanded for itself full expression. 

Longfellow first came to Harvard a mature and 
honored scholar, who had already drunk deep of 
manly happiness and sorrow. Holmes felt that he 
lived most of his years lonely in Boston, aloof from 
both the Concord and the Cambridge circles, depend- 
ent on the gatherings of the Saturday Club for his ar- 
tistic inspiration and truest companionship. Lowell, Lowell the 
then, who at fifty wrote that he had lived in one po^toT* 
house, in the country, all his life, is peculiarly the Cambridge, 
home poet of Cambridge. A village, or rather a 
scattered trio of villages, only, it was in his boyhood, 
as his " Cambridge Thirty Years Ago," and Dr. 
Holmes's opening chapter in the " Poet," vividly set 
forth. It is worthy of note how nearly all the best 
work of this period was done in quiet hamlets. 
Professor Lowell, indeed, so late as 1870, met his 
famous condescending foreigner while " walking one 
day into the Village," — so was born, and lived, out- 
side even its vague limits. The fine old colonial 
mansion stands close to Mt. Auburn. It is excel- 
lently described in a letter to an English friend (" Let- 
ters," II, p. 392). It was from the rustic '4ielp" 
on his father's estate that the boy first became famil- 
iar with the dialect of the " Biglow Papers." Some 
outdoor lessons began still earlier. 

" No bird but I could name him by his flight, 
No distant tree but by his shape was known, 
Or, near at hand, by leaf or bark alone." 



226 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

The essay on his " Garden Acquaintance " goes far 
to justify this claim. In 1874, walking with Still- 
man, he counts fifteen species of birds, nearly all 
singing, within a quarter-hour (" Letters," II, pp. 
132-133). 

Books were, almost as early, dear and familiar to 
him. His imagination and poetic impulse he in- 
herited, like Holmes, not from a learned clerical 
father, but from a vivacious, gifted mother. In 
Lowell's case there were on the spindle side Keltic 
blood, and a love for fairy tale, ballad, and legend. 
In Boston and Cambridge the Renaissance of liberal 
culture was in full progress. Ticknor's pioneer col- 
legiate work was well done, and Longfellow suc- 
ceeded him in the Smith professorship when Lowell 
was a Junior (1836). The best books of modern 
European literature, at least, were perfectly accessi- 
ble. Felt on sat in the Greek chair, but his work in 
the classroom seems to have lacked inspiration. Re- 
taining all his life a remarkable facility in writing 
Latin, Mr. Lowell evidently had decidedly less Greek 
than we could wish. 

Lowell's perfect ease in verse, his wit, a passing 
attack of erotics, and a lightness of touch which he 
did not steadily retain, are all pleasantly evident in 
the clever echo of Burns's dialect, written at eighteen, 
and at a sitting, to his friend Loring ("Letters," I, pp. 
21-26). It was in the very next week that Emerson 
delivered at Cambridge his first, perhaps his greatest, 
oration, " The American Scholar." What it meant 
to the dreamy young prince of Elmwood is set forth 
in the essays on "Thoreau" and on "Emerson the Lec- 
turer." "It is the sound of the trumpet that the 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 227 

young soul longs for, careless what breath may fill 
it. Sidney heard it in the ballad of ' Chevy Chace,' 
and we in Emerson." The debt, and also the inde- 
pendence, of the younger man of genius to his mature 
comrade, could hardly be more strongly stated. " He 
put us in communication with a larger style of 
thought, sharpened our wits with a more pungent 
phrase, gave us ravishing glimpses of an ideal under 
the dry husk of our New England ; freed us, in short, 
from the stocks of prose." 

We are not to suppose all this was effected in that 
one August hour. The willfulness of Lowell showed 
itself early. He is said to have struggled to look 
into every book in the growing college library, except 
those prescribed by his teachers. There is a tradi- 
tion of rather more audacious disobedience. Cer- 
tainly, the chosen poet of the class of '38 was in 
forced exile on his own Commencement Day. He 
remarks of Concord, in Hosea's voice: — 

"I know the village, though; was sent there once, Lowell in 

A-schoolin', cause to home I played the dunce." Ck)ncord. 

Emerson was extremely kind to the restless marooned 
youth, and showed him in their walks together some 
of his own woodland haunts. Yet the Transcen- 
dentalist brethren were ridiculed in the class poem 
itself. So, too, were the followers of Garrison. In 
the latter direction, however, a great light came to 
Lowell very soon after. A letter to Loring in No- 
vember of that same year calls the Abolitionists " the 
only ones with whom I sympathize of the present 
extant parties." Emerson's idealism, also, he later 
came to share, more than any other of our well- 
known poets. 



228 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

With his lifelong friend, Story, and like Dr. 
Holmes before him, he tried to gratify paternal pride 
by studying law. It was not a happy time. "I 
remember in '39 putting a cocked pistol to my fore- 
head — and being afraid to pull the trigger " (" Let- 
ters," II, p. 375). In the letters of that year we hear 
more of poetry than of legal lore. His first poem 
publicly printed was probably "Threnodia," in the 
Knickerbocker^ May, 1839. Despite many threats 
to the contrary, he actually completed his two years 
of nominal legal study, graduated in 1840, but prac- 
ticed little. 

His bolder ventures of about the same time were 
the publication of a thin first volume of verses, "A 
Year's Life," and his engagement to Maria White, 
a fragile child of genius, and also an ardent re- 
former. The reminiscence of Dante's "Vita Nuova" 
on his title-page is confirmed by such verses soon 
after as : — 

" O moonlight deep and tender, 

A year and more agone 
Your mist of golden splendor 

Round my betrothal shone." 

Lowell himself, a severe critic, would have sup- 
pressed most of these early poems if it had been pos- 
sible. This volume is indeed made up chiefly of clever 
echoes, by a 'prentice hand. For some years later most 
of his verse continues rather conventional and artifi- 
cial, though he developed swiftly toward mature and 
independent utterance. His modest earnings from 
his pen grew much less rapidly. His lyrics found a 
ready hearing in the rather ephemeral magazines of 
the day. His book, " Conversations on Some of the 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 229 

Old Poets " (1844), is in rather stiff dialogue form. 
It has many flashes of wit and keen insight, shows 
abundant and careful reading, but was ignored by its 
author in later life. 

Lowell's father lost most of his means about 1840, 
and the young poet had to struggle for his own sup- 
port. His dislike for law only increased until he 
escaped from it. He married in December, 1844, 
and spent the rest of the winter in Philadelphia, but 
returned permanently to Elmwood, which finally 
became his own estate. His means, however, were 
never large, and his love of rare books, with his 
generous, impulsive nature, often drained his purse. 

His wife's influence made him an ardent Aboli- 
tionist, and from 1846 to 1850 he was a constant 
contributor to the Antislavery Standard, He was Distracting 
then, as all his life, an indefatigable reader and *^^®^®s^s. 
student of literature, with far more of the critical 
and analytical tendency than is usual or safe in 
the creative artist. So three somewhat discordant 
powers contended for mastery. Whether his true 
destiny was to become poet, scholar and critic, or 
political and social reformer, seamed doubtful. 

Such hesitation at the "parting of the ways" is "Parting of 
not unusual, perhaps not unfortunate, in early man- a^po^^^'" 
hood. But Lowell never fully made his choice, or 1849. 
at least attempted to choose all three careers; and 
throughout the rest of his life repined often that 
he had not planned and spent his years to better 
advantage. Above all he regretted his wavering 
and half-hearted devotion to the Muse. "A poet 
should feed on nothing but poetry." " A poet should 
not be, nay, he can't be, anything else without loss to 



230 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

him as poet, however much he may gain as man" 
(" Letters," II, pp. 332, 346). The widespread notion 
as to his streaks of indolence, however, must be a 
humorous jest of his own starting. Few men have 
been such unwearying students, and nearly all 
European belles lettres^ from the Troubadours to 
Tennyson, were stored in his marvelous memory. 
Indeed, if he had consecrated far more of his hours 
to "indolent" brooding over his own poetry, we 
should now be the richer. 

Least natural to him, perhaps, was the strenuous 
devotion to radical reforms which filled much of 
his youth. Yet he even made a sharp private criti- 
cism of Dr. Holmes, for his lack of enthusiasm in such 
causes (Morse's "Life of Holmes," Vol. II, p. 107). 
Even then, Lowell's keen critical sense detected his 
own unwisdom, as the lines on himself in the " Fable 
for Critics " clearly reveal. Though always alert and 
fearless as to his civic duties, yet after his wife's death 
he was long absorbed more and more by his purely 
poetical and scholastic careers, the latter of which 
he left reluctantly at last for high diplomatic 
service. 

A certain boyishness, in his sudden moods and 
whimsical impulses, he never escaped. He could 
not revise patiently work flung off in the fits of 
inspiration. Many an audacious, indiscreet, even 
savage line, he would fain have recalled ; a steadier 
self-control, even the instinct of reticence, would 
have spared him the tardy regret. We must rec- 
oncile all this, as we may, with the austere taste, 
even the fastidiousness, often shown by Lowell the 
critic. 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 231 

We may expect to find the work of such a man 
uneven in quality, of widely diverse tone, but alwa3^s 
intensely energetic, and full of his own fearlessly 
independent nature. That is exactly the case. 
His "Prometheus" is far indeed from ^Eschylus's 
repentant rebel. In truth the Greek hero's name 
was taken up, avowedly, as a type of the heroic 
radical who revolts against real tyranny, whose very 
defeat is his eternal glory and triumph. So the 
Hamadryad, as vengeful an elemental spirit, in 
the Greek myth and in Lan dor's larger treatment, 
as the Northern Undines, becomes in Lowell's 
" Rhoecus " a tender-hearted disciple of Wordsworth, 
and utters a gentle sermon to her faithless mortal 
lover. So each subject is made plastic to utter his 
inner feeling. 

The clearest bugle note of Lowell's earliest 
period, worthy to be set beside " Locksley Hall," 
whose ringing music it recalls, is the " Present 
Crisis." It has no such occasional or temporary 
political value as the title implies. It is a grand 
statement of universal moral truth. 

" Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide." 

The " First Snowfall " was written when his infant 
daughter Blanche died. After a second child. Rose, 
had been laid beside her sister in sweet Auburn, his 
only son had died in Rome, and, finally, his wife had 
followed them to the grave, in October, 1853, he com- 
pleted his " After the Burial," begun when the first 
blow had fallen. This is perhaps the deepest and Full utter- 
most personal cry of agony in all our lyric. Emer- fniy^c^^^ 
son's " Threnody " has tones as tender, but the man 



232 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



was even then serene, a mental state Lowell hardly 
ever knew. From the brief, starlit tragedy of his 
married life, only his youngest child, a daughter, was 
spared to him. 

Lowell had meanwhile leaped into national fame 
as Hosea Biglow, in 1847. His biting wit was no 
new discovery, to the poet himself or to others. In- 
deed, the authorship of the " squibs " was guessed by 
many from the first. His hot indignation over the 
Mexican War — forced upon the unwilling North, 
and waged, as he believed, to secure more room 
for slavery — fused all his powers in eager activity. 
He is merciless to Caleb Gushing, to John P. Robin- 
son, or to any other political opponent. As to his 
travesties of the motives, character, and life generally 
of the South, as in " The Debate in the Sennit," it 
is amusing, now, to note that Poe singles him out as 
the most fanatical of Abolitionists, as the author 
whom " no Southern gentleman can with self-respect 
read " at all. 

His rhymes show a real genius in audacity. The 
dialect, though perfectly genuine and still fully alive, 
is often ignoble, the spelling being at times as aim- 
lessly illiterate as Josh Billings's. This latter error, 
indeed, which has misled many later dialect writers, 
is frankly deplored by Lowell himself. The regret 
of Sumner, that the poems '' were not written in the 
English language," is well founded as to many por- 
tions at least. Much of Lowell's most serious and 
lofty thought is swept into this strong current, as in 
the thrilling stanza : — 

" Massachusetts, God forgive her, 
She's a-kneelin' with the rest." 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 233 

This is however especiall}^ true of the second series 
of "Biglow Papers," inspired by the Civil War. 
These are much loftier in all purely poetic qualities. 
Yet even there the " Courtin' " and " Suthin' in the 
Pastoral Line " justify, nay demand, the Yankee dia- 
lect, to which indeed they cling, defying any attempts 
to translate them into English. 

The Reverend Homer Wilbur is a semidramatic 
creation, yet much of Lowell's own genuine learning, 
his mastery of Latin good and bad, his reckless wit, 
and his wide knowledge of men, is accredited to the 
dim-eyed old parson. Indeed, after the humor of 
the verses has become largely obscured with the de- 
tails of last century politics, parts of this stilted 
prose may yet be treasured among the essayist's best 
utterances. But it would be difficult to name any 
canon of fairness in warfare which the young radi- 
cal and man of genius observed scrupulously in this 
book. The second series, as was said, is full of ex- 
quisitely noble verse and prose. But in utter lack 
of sympathy with all things in Dixie it goes, if pos- 
sible, even beyond the former volume. All this only 
reminds us of the bitterness of civil war. The long 
poem in '' dog Latin " marks the extreme of Mr. Low- 
ell's perverse audacity. 

The year 1848 was one of remarkable activity. 
Besides completing and publishing the Biglow 
volume, he wrote his " Fable for Critics." The main "Fable for 
story of this work would be too attenuated, disjointed, ?j5Jo^^^'" 
and unintelligible for a comic opera. One of his 
footnotes is 

" Turn back now to page — goodness only knows what 
And take a fresh hold on the thread of my plot." 



234 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

It is now read almost solely for the rollicking, 
audacious, yet most lifelike descriptions of the 
chief American authors then living. Most of these 
sketches are little masterpieces. We must remem- 
ber that in nearly all cases much of our authors' 
best work was done later. Thus Hawthorne had 
written none of his larger romances. We need not 
dwell on these critiques here, since they must be re- 
ferred to carefully in studying nearly every writer 
of our period. The worst personal feature in the 
poem is the oft-repeated ridicule and abuse of Mar- 
garet Fuller, who was then in Italy, living the most 
heroic chapter of her strenuous and helpful life. 
Her chief offense in his eyes was that of which he 
accuses Poe, "flinging mudballs at Longfellow": and, 
let us add, at young Lowell himself. But we cannot 
imagine Longfellow himself taking such a revenge. 

The same wonderful year produced, among other 
poems, the popular favorite among all Lowell's seri- 
ous verses, "The Vision of Sir Launfal." It is a 
sound sermon. It has its charm as a story, though 
not clearly told. Its touches of outdoor life are a 
delight to appreciative readers. We can understand 
perfectly that it should have been written in a state 
of possession^ during which the poet neither ate, 
slept, nor regained full consciousness of outward 
things. Its chief marvel is its utter remoteness from 
so much of his other work. From " Launfal " to 
"John P. Robinson he," not to mention the weari- 
some and aimless ingenuity of Mr. Knott, the gamut 
is about as long as if one hand had composed " Hudi- 
bras" and Rossetti's "The Blessed Damosel." 

Lowell's career as a Harvard professor of French, 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 235 

Spanish, and Belles Lettres began in 1855, but he Smith 
actually spent the first two years abroad, so the fgTsf^^^'* 
burden of editing the Atlantic Monthly was under- 
taken at almost the same moment. He resigned the 
editorship after only two years, but from 1862 to 
1872 had joint charge with Mr. Norton of the North 
American Review^ then a scholarly quarterly. Out 
of his college lectures grew in large measure the 
important essays in literary criticism, a field in which 
he is an unquestioned first among our authors. 
Except the studies of Dante, Lessing, and Rousseau, 
these papers deal usually with English and native 
authors, from Chaucer to Swinburne and Thoreau. 

Perhaps no American gained from the Civil War The Civil 
such large and swift development as Lowell. His ]Iqi^is65 
personal share in the national atonement included 
the loss by death of all his nephews and other nearest 
young kinsmen who had been as sons to him. A famous 
passage in " A Good Word for Winter " commemo- 
rates them. His lyric contribution meantime to the 
northern cause was chiefly in the dialect poems. 
His " Political Essays" contain a remarkable series of 
prose papers which, in a noble spirit of patriotism, 
mark and sum up the stages of the struggle. The 
study of Abraham Lincoln is a wonderful example 
of early and full appreciation. Most of it was 
printed in time to cheer the heart of the great 
Emancipator himself, before his tragic death. We 
may well imagine, even, that the impatient, intolerant 
Puritan scholar found helpful instruction 

" In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 
And supple-tempered will, 
That bent like perfect steel, to spring again and thrust." 



236 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

It has always seemed noteworthy, in a poem by a 
college professor, recited on the day when Alma 
Mater paid her honors to her own 

" Heroes living, and dear martyred dead," 

that the culminating passage should hail the states- 
man bred amid ignorance and poverty as 

" New birth of our new soil, the first American." 

Mr. Scudder has recently reminded us that this 

famous stanza was added just after the public read- 

•' Commemo- ing. This " Commemoration Ode " is generally 

ration Ode," regarded as the loftiest fountain jet of American 

Commence- poetry. If the critics are herein for once too fond 

July 21 1865 ^^^ proud, it is but natural ; for at least it was the 

first adequate and noble utterance of the nation's 

deepest pent-up feelings. This poem, like " Sir 

Launfal," was thrown off all but instantaneously, in 

a white heat, at the very last moment. With this 

lofty ode Mr. Lowell took his place, which he held 

thereafter without rival, as our national patriotic 

poet. 

This position was fully maintained in the three 
memorial poems, on the centennials celebrated for 
the battle of Lexington, for Washington's assump- 
tion of command, and for the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. Here some of Lowell's rarest qualities : 
frank, fearless, discriminating patriotism, philosophic 
and scholarly historic sense, and poetic genius : were 
fully and happily fused. 

The most sustained poem of Lowell which is quite 
" Cathe- detached from any passing event is the '' Cathedral." 
drai," 1869. rj^j^^g ^^^^ indeed, his most serious effort to reconse- 



THE CAMBRIDGE POETS 237 

crate himself to purely creative literature. It was a 
characteristic freakishness that disfigured the intro- 
duction with an atrocious international jest and pun. 
Yet the poem, brooded on ever since his actual visit 
to Chartres in 1855, is full of the deepest thoughts 
on art, history, and the whole life of man. It is, 
indeed, somewhat too esoteric and ideal at times to 
be easy reading. A few passages like 

" Spumesliding down the baffled decuman " 

defy analysis altogether. But we rise from a peru- 
sal of the austere lofty and sustained rhapsody with 
a fuller realization, how much more he might have 
been as poet alone : if his nature was indeed capable 
of such concentration. Some of the blank verse is 
truly Miltonic. 

Excellent evidence of Lowell's growth, in all 
ways, may be seen by comparing some of the por- 
traits of friends in his " Agassiz " (1874) with the 
better-known sketches in the "Fable for Critics." 
The feeling of approaching age in the later poem 
seems premature, but was heightened just then by 
exile, ill health, death of friends, and bitter shame 
at our ignoble politics. Even so, the music of the 
verses beginning 

" Yea truly, as the sallowing years " 

brings us rich enjoyment, wrung from the poet's 
sorrow. 

Mr. Lowell went to Spain as minister in 1877, and Diplomatic 
was transferred to London in 1880. The next five i877!j885. 
years were perhaps the most useful of his life. His 
social success was a surprise to him, and he occasion- 
ally repined, naturally, over the long absences from 



238 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



Harvard 
Memorial 
Oration, 
November 
8, 1886. 



his books and pen. He was in great demand also as an 
occasional orator. His volume containing these Brit- 
ish addresses is called " Democracy," and a group of 
them really have a certain common link, emphasizing 
the essential unity of the Anglo-Saxon race, and of its 
leadership in the century-long and successful strug- 
gle against mediaeval feudalism and class privilege 
generally. There were verses in Hosea Biglow's 
strident, nasal voice, not wholly forgotten or for- 
given in England, which might well have made him 
persona non grata to court and people alike. But 
those earlier utterances were felt to be, like the 
latest, sincere, patriotic, and full of sturdy pluck. 
The boyish man of genius had fully matured at last. 

The present full restoration of normal good feel- 
ing, of conscious harmony in national aims and 
spirit, between ourselves and our long alienated 
Saxon brethren overseas, is doubtless more due to 
Mr. Lowell than to any other one man. Beside such 
prospective results in our politics, culture, literature, 
as we can already foresee, the loss of tenfold all the 
exquisite lyrics he might have written can still be 
borne. 

When our eldest seat of learning celebrated her 
two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, he would have 
been generally demanded as the poet of this truly 
national event, had he not been even more impera- 
tively needed for the larger utterance of the orator. 
Dr. Holmes's silvered hair and finished iambic verse 
honored the second place. It was their last notable 
public appearance. 

As has been indicated often, such a life is alto- 
gether too large and complex to be measured merely 



THE CAJ^IBRIDGE POETS 239 

by the yardstick of scholarship, or even by the magic 
wand of poesy. Lowell's verse is almost wholly 
lyric, and mainly a frank and full self -utterance. 
His fondness for occasional jest or even pun, hi& 
sparkling humor, even his boyish impulsiveness and 
fickleness, must never blind us to the intense serious- 
ness of his life as a whole. Dr. Holmes, himself 
quite capable of mere heart-easing mirth, knew aright 
his younger and more strenuous fellow-Puritan, — 

" Whose play is all earnest, whose wit is the edge 
(With a beetle behind) of a sham-splitting wedge.'* 

Lowell's purely critical essaj^s must doubtless 
eventually share the fate of all secondary and inter- 
pretative work, which each new epoch usually per- 
forms afresh from its own newly gained outlooks. 
Yet such papers as his " Dante " must long remain 
useful, illuminating the more arduous regions of 
literary study. As that pleased Mr. Norton, so his 
paper on Chaucer passed with approval under the 
searching eye of another beloved neighbor, Francis J. 
Child. His painstaking method is illustrated by his 
re-reading, more than once, every line of Dryden or 
Pope before he expressed his mature judgment upon 
such a master of style. Far more delightful to the 
general reader, however, indeed really a part of his 
creative, even poetic utterance, are " My Garden 
Acquaintance," " Good Word for Winter," and simi- 
lar prose studies. In particular, the two longer chap- 
ters of autobiography, " Cambridge Thirty Years 
Ago," and '' Moosehead Journal," leave a lively 
desire for more. 

Lowell's prose is not, on the whole, at present, an 



240 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

accepted model of style. His fondness for digres- 
sion, for remote illustration, even for rather recon- 
dite allusiveness, loads liis sentence and page too 
heavily for the less patient and more hasty reader of 
to-day. And yet, there is perhaps no writer of our 
country who would better reward the undivided 
devotion for a year, or more, of a mature, critical, 
independent American student. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Lowell's " Works," Houghton, 11 vols. "Letters," edited by 
C. E. Norton, Harpers, 2 vols. " Life," by Horace E. Scudder, 
Houghton, 2 vols. "Lowell and his Friends," E. E. Hale, 
Houghton. Howells's " Literary Friends," Part VII, Harpers. 
W. J. Stillman's " Autobiography." G. W. Curtis's " Oration 
on LoweU," Harpers. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE CLASSROOM 

An intelligent reading of the " Biglow Papers " must include 
careful discussion of both the Mexican and Civil wars. The 
outdoor poems, essays, like " Good Word for Winter," " Gar- 
den Acquaintance," etc., and passages in the " Letters," like II, 
pp. 132-133, should be brought together. The personal criticisms 
in " Fable for Critics " should be compared with Lowell's later 
utterances, and the opinions of others. Any one of his greater 
essays will permit indefinite illustration. The " Dante " is per- 
haps the most important. 



We may here call especial attention to the close personal friend- 
ships interlinking all oiu* chief New England authors, and to the 
numerous utterances of mutual admiration. Even the youngest 
student, armed only with a shelf -ful of our poets in e.g. the 
"Cambridge" editions, will easily find these memorials for him- 
self. Lowell's Letters, Longfellow's journals, Hawthorne's Note- 
books, may also be searched with profit. 



CHAPTER V 

LESS FAMILIAR NAMES 

OF course, the larger figures of our classic period, 
which we have endeavored thus far to delineate, 
have only emerged into eminence gradually, in most 
cases, amid a throng of eager rivals. We must re- 
member, too, that many names, now even less famil- 
iar than Mrs. Child's, were once much more widely 
known, certainly, than Hawthorne's or Thoreau's. 
Such diverse figures as the wildly romantic and mys- 
tical Maria Go wen Brooks, Southey's ''Maria dell' Maria 
Occidente," and the eminently proper, pious, prosy gro^g 
Lydia H. Sigourney, best known as the " American 1795-1845. 
Mrs. Hemans," were once bright stars, though now pale Howard 
indeed, in our eastern sky. In both cases, the modest (Huntley) 
excerpts of Mr. Stedman, whether in "Library" or 1791-1865.' 
"Anthology," will probably allay all eagerness for more. 

Often a single popular favorite, like the '' Old 
Oaken Bucket" of Samuel Woodworth, or the 
" Woodman Spare that Tree " of George P. Morris, 
is all that survives from a busy and prolific pen. 
Pierpont, a sturdier and more heroic figure, is still a John 
favorite of schoolboys, through such " pieces " as i-Jss^i^. 
"Warren's Address." 

A most striking illustration of short-lived fame is Catharine 
Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick, who is quite unnamed ^g^g^^t 
in some recent brief accounts of our literature. The 1789-1867. 
present historian is confident that he never saw any 
R 241 



242 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



Richard 

Henry 

Dana, 

1787-1879. 



Richard H. 
Dana, 2d, 
1815-1882. 

John 

Godfrey 

Saxe, 

1816-1887. 

Henry 

Wheeler 

Shaw, 

1818-1885. 



Silvester 

Judd, 

1813-1853. 



one of her books. Yet her career of fifty years, 
whether as teacher or author, was alike prosperous 
and honorable. Irving praised her "classic pen." 
Her "Redwood" (1824) was ascribed to Cooper, 
and had a success in five languages. The "Lin- 
woods, or Sixty Years since in America" (1835) 
was an accepted masterpiece of historical fiction. 

The long and useful life of the first Richard H. 
Dana covers almost our whole national existence. 
No wonder that the essays, poems, and tales pub- 
lished in his early youth were forgotten, like his 
friend Paulding's. Even his once famous verses 
entitled " The Buccaneer," it is said, when reprinted 
in a modern magazine, were generally accepted with- 
out question by its readers as a new production. 
He is somewhat better known, perhaps, as a founder 
of the scholarly North American Review^ in 1815. 
His son, the second Richard H. Dana, is remembered 
for his excellent account of his " Two Years Before 
the Mast." 

A genial and popular writer not many decades 
ago, Saxe is already fast approaching the oblivion 
that awaits the professional funmaker, who passes 
with the very fashions and follies that he satirizes. 
While Saxe's punning verses remind us of Hood's 
most whimsical vein, " Josh Billings " was a real 
and shrewd social critic, whose sayings often de- 
serve preservation in a saner orthography. 

Readers of the "Fable for Critics" will recall 
Lowell's enthusiasm over the " Margaret " of the 
Reverend Silvester Judd, 

" the first Yankee book 
With the soul of Down East in't." 



LESS FAMILIAR NAMES 243 

Mr. Lowell is speaking of the more idyllic and sim- 
pler first part, not of the strange vision of a Unita« 
rian ideal community elaborated later. After my 
own vain struggles honestly to read this " crude, 
careless, irrelevant, improbable " three-decker of a 
book, with its occasional streaks of realism and 
simple pathos, it is consoling to note Professor 
Richardson's confession, that it took him years to 
struggle through it. Some vivid pictures of our 
rough pioneer life might well be excerpted for gen- 
eral circulation in "Readers," the more as Judd's 
own brief years were heroically spent among the very 
people he describes. Indeed, the book is evidently 
not a bid for literary fame at all, but a painful 
sociological and religious study. 

Two minor poets, both also Unitarian preachers, and 
born in the same year with Judd, had a part in the 
Transcendental movement. Jones Ver}^ in particu- Jones Very 
lar, is a true mystic. Such poems as " Yourself," and i^^^^^^^^- 
"The Dead," — both in the Stedman "Anthology," 
— may well have shared the ridicule, and deserve 
quite the attention, so largely bestowed on Emerson's 
"Brahma." The "Old Road" is a fitting pendant 
to Bryant's "Crowded Street." If such pairing 
of American and alien singers were not so trite, and 
too often merely fanciful, we would reiterate once 
more the familiar comparison of Very to George 
Herbert. 

John S. Dwight (1813-1893), who instructed the John 
pupils of Brook Farm in music, Latin, Greek, and ^^!^^jf° 
German, was longest faithful to the first study upon 1813-1893. 
the list, editing for thirty years (1852-1881), in Bos- 
ton, his Journal of Music. Yet only a preacher born 



244 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



could have sped heavenward, on the lightest, airiest 
wings of verse, this sweetly solemn, but prosaic 

thought : — 

" Rest is not quitting 
The busy career ; 
Rest is the fitting 
Of self to its sphere." 

We are grieved to note that Mr. Stedman, most 
tolerant of Tityruses, doesn't admit this undoubted 
singer into the "Anthology" at all, even as the 
author of "God Save the State." 

Still in the same year was born the artist-poet 
Cranch. He graduated early from the Cambridge 
Divinity School, and preached a few years, but a 
strong personal and family bent for painting sent 
him to Italy. He wrote graceful prose and verse all 
his life, illustrating his own stories for children, etc. 
He is most widely known as the translator of the 
"^neid." In this rendering, though less sonorous 
than Bryant's blank verse, his lines are always smooth 
and his style natural. The rendering is a remarkably 
close and faithful one, yet eminently readable. 

In the present section we have set the somewhat 
mechanical birth-limit at 1820. Surely the most 
deliberate career will almost always show its full 
curve at the age of fifty. A practical reason, next 
to the opportune arrival of Lowell at the very end 
of the 'teens, determined us. Two hale and heroic 
figures, very much alive to-day, started in the race 
just beyond that line, in 1822 and 1823, and have 
done quite too large a share of the world's work in 
the last thirty years to be set back, even with all 
Nestor's honors, into the previous generation. 



LESS FAMILIAR NAMES 245 

All this calls perhaps undue attention to the six 
or seven men of letters who share the birth-year of 
Lowell. There is a temptation to emphasize the 
fact that they came to the young manhood age of 
eighteen exactly in the year of the Phi Beta address 
by Emerson, our literary Declaration of Indepen- 
dence. It is easy in nearly every case, save Lowell's, 
to cavil at this explanation. 

Thomas W. Parsons, shiest and most fastidious of Thomas 
artists in verse, was even then in Italy. As a lad ^^^^^^"^ 

•^ Parsons, 

of seventeen he had no doubt submitted straightway 1819-1892. 
to the power of the grim Florentine who held him 
all his days with glittering eye, demanding English 
utterance for that miracle of song that can never be 
adequately retold in other speech, the " Commedia 
Divina," and intoning after his own verse the best 
lyrics of his votary. Parsons, then, might be ac- 
counted rather a disciple of Dante than of Emerson. 

Yet a Yankee poet he certainly was, and from Italy 
or England he came back to Boston as surely as a 
homing pigeon. He sometimes joined Lowell and 
Norton in the sessions and discussions over Longfel- 
low's blank verse translation of Dante. Mr. Norton, 
himself a prose translator, has now edited Parsons's 
incomplete version of the " Commedia " in rhymed 
quatrains. So welcome to all of them was the music 
in the neighboring street. Parsons's " Lines on a 
Bust of Dante " we "shall remember long." 

" Timothy Titcomb " (J. G. Holland) was proba- Josiah 
bly taking daguerreotypes, or setting copies in pen- Honand 
manship, at the other end of the state, while Emerson I819-188I. 
spoke. Though he worked at almost every other 
trade, he was a preacher born. His doctrine, how- 



246 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



ever, was but a sweet-flavorecl commonplace morality, 
which left no deep mark behind it. Even the 
women, who crowded his lecture halls, have almost 
forgotten his name. He lived to see the rise of a 
"writer called Roe," who doubtless eclipsed him 
with his own popular audience, though now in turn 
forgot. He was no virile son of Emerson's spirit. 

The success of Holland's early books was amazing. 
That a poem (" Kathrina," 1867) should sell one hun- 
dred thousand copies, rivals the run of the "novel, 
of the year " in our own day. He naturally gravi- 
tated to New York, was the first editor of Scrihner's 
Monthly^ and also of the Century (1870). 

Herman Melville, though he was. born and died in 
New York, was by parentage, marriage, and for a 
time by residence, associated with New England. 
He, when Emerson spoke, was working his way be- 
fore the mast toward Liverpool. However, his liter- 
ary career is a peculiarly detached one. His life as 
a sailor, and startling adventures among cannibals 
in the Marquesas Islands, provided materials and 
suggestion both for his romances and for his more 
authentic memoirs. He holds his own beside Cooper 
and Marryat, and boy readers, at least, will need no 
introduction to him. Nor will their enjoyment ever 
be alloyed by a Puritanic moral, or mystic double 
meaning. 

Edwin P.Whipple is a happy example of strenu- 
ous persistent self-culture, on a somewhat limited and 
rugged nature. He long ranked as a good second, 
at least, to Lowell himself among our literary critics. 
If he is now comparatively little read, it is partly 
because each generation reviews for itself the imagi- 



LESS FAMILIAR NAMES 247 

native and creative literature of the past, having little 
leisure or inclination even for the best of older sec- 
ondary work. He lacks some part of the far-reaching 
wit and reckless audacity that make Lowell's essays 
themselves a part of his unique personal expression. 
In poetic utterance he was altogether deficient, and 
indeed is not strictly an original author at all. 

In Whipple is perhaps best exemplified the didac- 
tic and scholarly side of the Lyceum epoch. That 
Wendell Phillips, an audacious agitator, consummate 
orator, and most brilliant of rhetoricians, should draw 
and hold the crowd, was no wonder. But Whipple 
was none of these. He was as heavy in person and 
as scholarly in his style as a German university pro- 
fessor. He simply issued from his Boston study 
each winter to read his latest essay. He was warmly 
welcomed by more than a thousand audiences, all 
the way from New Bedford to Minneapolis. He 
was felt to be a valued part of the great engine of 
culture, an engine far more conscientiously em- 
ployed than is the latter-day magazine. 

There is no doubt of this man's allegiance to the 
heads of the local school. Indeed, his calm studies 
of Carlyle, Emerson, Ticknor, as well as of many 
earlier authors, are the work rather of a disciple 
than of an independent creative mind. 

It might seem, at first glance, that Story shared William 
with his friend Lowell nearly everything except his ^^^^^^^ 
filial loyalty to Emerson. Together they strove to 1819-1895. 
please their fathers by studying law. Judge Story, 
an accepted legal oracle the world over, was anxious 
to forget his own " Fugitive Poems " of 1804. His 
son did "practice" for some years, and edited law 



248 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

books until 1847. Though already known as a poet, 
yet when he finally escaped he steered straight for 
Italy, and devoted himself above all else to sculpture. 
He came to be so perfectly at ease in Rome that it 
is hard to believe that he could be fully at home any- 
where else. That Emerson was himself somewhat 
unmoved by painting, sculpture, and even music, is 
well known. That is perhaps for him, as for many 
Yankees besides, due to the atrophy of the sesthetic 
sense through the centuries of repression. Yet it 
was Emerson who said, "To give all men access to 
the masterpieces of art and literature is the problem 
of civilization." 

To be sure, even in Story's verse, when Cleopatra, 
longing for Antony's rough caresses, recalls in glow- 
ing visions the happy earlier incarnation when they 
slew and fought and loved as tiger and tigress, we 
may fear it a shameless piece of art for art's sake, or 
at best, of pagan splendor which had but " its own 
excuse for being." Still, that very apology was 
framed by Emerson's own modest " Rhodora," while 
even Jonathan Edwards's "Young Lady in New 
Haven " seemed to her youthful lover simply beauti- 
ful, without as within. Some of Story's verse, as 
the " Poor Chiffonier," is as clearly full-charged with 
a double spiritual meaning as Emerson's " Musketa- 
quit," or Lowell's " Extreme Unction " itself. 

" These tattered rags, so soiled and frayed, 
Were in a loom of wonder made ; 
And beautiful and free from shame 
When from the master's hand they came." 

No doubt Emerson would agree that the artist-poet 
Story labored as faithfully, and quite as fruitfully, 



LESS FAMILIAR NAMES 249 

for the improvement and happiness of humanity, as 
Michael Wiggles worth, or Jones Very, or any pale 
Puritan ascetic between. 

Remote indeed in its sectarian tone from Emersonian 
liberalism is " The Wide Wide World " of ^' Elizabeth 
Wetherell." Indeed, the rather bitter satirical treat- 
ment of all save the EngUsh-born characters indicates 
a decided lack even of patriotic pride. Neither of Susan 

Warner 

the Warner sisters, nor the two in collaboration, ever isig-is^ 
approached again this first popular success. :J^°^ ^• 

Lastly, in 1819 was first heard the "barbaric i820- 
yawp " of " Walt " Whitman. He so loudly proclaims Walter 
his freedom from all artistic or aesthetic traditions, ilf^^go' 
that no one will attempt to assign him to a school. 
That Emerson should have introduced Whitman's 
coarsest book to the public has always seemed strange 
indeed. Edward Emerson tells us that his father 
wrote a courteous private letter, wishing to encour- 
age an aspiring young mechanic, but was much 
annoyed to find a sentence therefrom printed, in 
letters of gold, on the covers of the next edition. 
Perhaps Emerson felt he could not ignore even so 
shrill and vulgar a response to his famous bugle call 
of 1837 : "Our long apprenticeship to the learning 
of other lands draws to a close. . . . The sluggard 
intellect of this continent will look from under its 
iron lids." Whitman's later work, and especially his 
prose, often expresses in inspiring fashion the exult- 
ant vigor, the generous humanity, of our national 
life. But to the masses he is unintelligible, while to 
most of the critical few his own defiant scorn for 
conventions, still more his utter lack of deeper insight 
or artistic charm, have made him — uninteresting. 



250 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



Literature 
outside New 
England. 



Nathaniel 
Parker 
Willis, 
1806-1867. 



John P. 

Kennedy, 

1795-1870. 

William 

Gilmore 

Sirams, 

1806-1870. 



But the really absorbing force of the "Puritan 
Renaissance," as Mr. Wendell well calls the epoch 
from Channing to Lowell, is best seen if we look at 
decades, and not at single years. Of course, the 
activity of Irving, Cooper, and their friends con- 
tinued far into that period. After 1820 there appear 
Bayard Taylor, Clemens, Eggleston, and other figures, 
that do not share the New England tradition. But 
among men whose birth fell in the twenty years 
immediately following Emerson's (1803-1823), it 
is difficult to find in the Middle states any prominent 
figure, except the belated youngest Knickerbocker, 
the jaunty magazinist and social lion, N. P. Willis. 
The verses which his apologists quote would 
not be floated into any great magazine of to-day. 
The few pages of foreign social gossip printed by 
Mr. Stedman, with their pleasantly satirical glimpses 
of Lady Blessington, Tom Moore, and the rest, give 
us a slight desire for more. Yet this is, after all, 
but the mere bubbles and spray upon the refluent 
wave of real literature. 

Amid the far more picturesque and leisurely life 
of the Southland, meantime, only one large shape 
rises to eclipse the genial author of " Horse Shoe 
Robinson," who, when a litterateur at all, and not 
fully absorbed in politics, seems half a local antiquary, 
and half an easy imitator of Scott. Simms we shall 
discuss more fully, with his friends, on a later page ; 
but his sympathetic biographer. Professor Trent, 
himself denies him a place in the first rank. 

Westward it is still more vain to face as yet. 
That the generation which tramped and hewed 
and fought its way toward the Pacific could not see, 



LESS FAMILIAR NAMES 251 

and depict in lasting artistic forms, the picturesque 
side of its own life, is not at all strange. For this 
we turn rather to Irving, Cooper, and perhaps Paul- 
ding, and still more to the new generation. 

The large fact remains, the largest fact, indeed, in 
the story of our literature. Whether personal in- 
fluence be the essential explanation or not, nearly 
all the literary artists born in America in the first 
three decades of the nineteenth century, and a gener- 
ous proportion of those who have attained eminence 
at any later time, were of Puritan stock and New 
England birth. They breathed an air charged with 
the freedom of thought for which Channing and 
Emerson had fought. And to almost any of us so 
born and reared, it remains a lifelong conviction, 
that the true efflatus of our national inspiration has 
blown, more than from any other source, cold and* 
clear from the shore of the Musketaquit. Perhaps 
only two or three of our greatest authors later born, 
— Poe, Simms, and Mark Twain, — have been alto- 
gether unaffected by Emerson. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

For many of the authors here mentioned the extracts in 
Stedman's " Library "" or " Anthology " will suffice. " Two Years 
Before the Mast," by R. H. Dana, 2d, Houghton, Mifflin, 
& Co. "Margaret," by Silvester Judd, Little, Brown, & Co. 
"Essays and Poems" of Jones Very, Houghton. Virgil's 
"iEneid," translated by C. P. Cranch, Houghton. Dante's 
"Divine Comedy," translated by T. W. Parsons, Houghton. 
"Poems" of T." W. Parsons, Houghton. "Poems" of W. 
W. Story, 2 vols., Houghton. " Whitman," a study, by John 
Burroughs, Houghton. See also " Whitmania " in Swinburne's 
" Studies in Prose and Poetry," and T. W. Higginson's paper 
on Whitman, in " Contemporaries." 



CHAPTER VI 
THE HISTORIANS 

IN any real literature, the creative and imaginative 
artist, in prose or verse, holds the central position. 
His work offers not merely truth, but vital and typ- 
ical truth, set forth in a form that shall charm, in- 
struct, and sway mankind. Because it is the fullest 
expression of the noblest individual genius, it is also 
the truest utterance of the whole people. We all feel 
this as to the " Scarlet Letter," or the "Commemora- 
tion Ode." The perfect form, the wisdom of thought, 
are alike indispensable. There may or may not be, 
also, an avowed patriotic purpose, or indeed any pe- 
culiar fitness in time or place, for the essential value is 
lasting and universal. Toward such supreme and 
lonely triumphs every fine art strives. But apart from 
his traditional and peculiar fields, such as lyric, epic, 
drama, romance, the literary artist has free entry into 
a broad and open middle ground of human inter- 
course, the domain of the prose essay. One special- 
ized and elastic form of the essay is the record of 
past events. 

Certainly the historian may well be a consummate 
artist. The very earliest European history was not 
merely a work of entrancing interest, but was written 
in a most fascinating style. More than this, its skill- 
ful general form was no doubt consciously modeled, 

252 



THE fflSTORIANS 253 

with judicious freedom, after the earlier master- 
pieces of epic and tragedy. Indeed, not merely 
Herodotus, but the gravest of later recorders, both 
in Greece and in Rome, felt free to illuminate the 
plain tale of events with fictitious speeches and con- 
versations. Such license should doubtless transfer a 
modern work to the class of historical romance. Still, 
there are sketches of Irving, especially on Spanish 
ground, which are not easy to classify on either side. 

Save only the reckless zealot. Cotton Mather, our 
earlier chroniclers were in little danger of erring to 
the inventive side. The chief names, except Bev- 
erley, are little more than those of diarists and keepers 
of sober annals. Bradford, Winthrop, Sewall, are 
the most important. Real historical composition 
begins late, and even then is long almost confined 
to the narrow limits of Cambridge and Boston. 
This may remind us how largely the writing of 
history is, after all, a science rather than an art, 
a special form of scholarly activity possible only in 
libraries. The present chapter, then, justifies the 
early introduction of Ticknor's name, and illustrates 
further the scholarly side of the Puritan Renaissance. 

The intimacy of Prescott with Ticknor began in William 
boyhood, and is summed up in a loving biography of p^^g^J^^f 
the younger by the surviving scholar. When a Junior 1796-1859. 
at college, Prescott met with the accident that seemed 
fatal to his promising career. During a merry riot 
in the Commons hall he was struck in the open eye 
with a hard piece of bread. The sight of that eye 
was at once destroyed, the other dangerously weak- 
ened. His years of suffering, imprisonment in dark 
rooms, quest for medical aid abroad, are a familiar 



254 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

tale. It was to be a permanent handicap. Extra exer- 
tion always brought agony and prolonged idleness. 
From pain he hardly knew release. 

His studies, in languages and literature especially, 
were pushed with far more steadfast energy after the 
calamity. He had a generous fortune, and early in 
his manhood won a most devoted wife. He early 
developed grace as a general essayist. In the autumn 
evenings of 1824, Ticknor, already especially devoted 
to Spanish literature, read to his friend his college 
lectures. This first drew Prescott to that language, 
and so toward his life work. Ticknor 's rich library 
supplied his first Spanish books. 

In January, 1826, he determined to make Ferdinand 
and Isabella the subject of a history. He employed a 
long succession of hired readers, some of them igno- 
rant of the Romance languages, which he simply 
taught them to pronounce. Unable to dictate easily, 
he adapted a frame of wires to guide his own hand. 
The rude scrawl, which he did not even see, was later 
deciphered by his assistant. 

It was under these conditions that the first mas- 
terly historical work in America was done. Com- 
pleted after ten years of unwearied devotion, and 
published, it at once became a classic. The subject 
was happily chosen ; recent works in other languages 
aided an English author materially ; but Prescott's 
" Ferdinand " Ferdinand and Isabella " is in the best sense his own. 
Isabella " ^^ particular, the pure flowing style, the easy mastery 
1837. of all the materials, the perfect proportion and con- 

nection of parts, the warm interest inspired and evi- 
dently shared by the author, are doubly remarkable. 

His eyesight improved somewhat in after life, 



1843. 
Peru," 



THE HISTORIANS 255 

though always imperfect and precarious. In his tire- 
less search for books and unpublished documents he 
was always dependent on the sight of others. All 
archives, and private files of documents, were opened 
up for him. Friends like Ticknor and the Everetts 
never flagged in their devotion. 

His other chief books grew naturally out of the "Mexico, 
first. The latest, a life of Philip II, would, if com 
pleted, have proved his masterpiece, though the con- 1847 
quests of Peru and of Mexico more easily arouse the 1855^1^^3 ' 
enthusiasm of our boyhood. It is well known that 
Irving insisted on resigning the last-named subject 
to Prescott, in 1839, though he had made considerable 
preparations for using it himself. 

Mr. Prescott was an extremely generous and lov- 
able man. Doubtless his great calamity ennobled 
both his character and his life work. He sent copies 
of his writing-machine wherever he heard of a fellow- 
sufferer. When Charles Sumner turned radical, 
Prescott alone, in aristocratic Boston, and Long- 
fellow in Cambridge, still kept their doors and hearts 
open to the old friendship. 

When we recall the careers of Ticknor, of Prescott, 
in great part also of Irving, the " Spanish Student " 
of Longfellow, etc., it seems doubly pathetic that we 
were destined to break the Occidental power, and 
hasten the utter collapse, of a state which not only 
sent out the discoverer of America, but was the im- 
mediate source of inspiration for so much of our best 
scholarship, romance, poetry, and historical author- 
ship. 

, - , . ^ o • Longfellow's 

" How much of my young heart, O Spain, » Castles in 

Went out to thee in davs of vore." Spain." 



256 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877) also graduated 
at Harvard, and studied at Gottingen, where in 1832 
he formed an intimate and lasting friendship with 
a gigantic, beer-drinking, duel-fighting, loud-voiced 
fellow-student, named Otto von Bismarck. Motley 
himself was extremely beautiful, refined, a sensitive, 
rather discontented, but noble and generous nature. 

Not in love with his legal studies. Motley made 
two promising failures in novel-writing, and a de- 
cided hit with a paper on Peter the Great, in the 
scholarly North American. The story of the Dutch 
Republic he considered as the opening chapter in the 
one long struggle for civic and religious liberty, con- 
tinued without a break in Holland, England, and 
America. Just when he came to feel that this and 
naught else must be his life task, he learned that Pres- 
cott was already collecting materials for a history of 
Philip II. Instantly imagining a fatal "collision " of 
these two subjects, he hastened to the elder author with 
the proposal to abandon his own attempt. Prescott 
earnestly urged him to continue, cordially put his 
own materials at his service, and in the preface of 
his Philip II announces the preparation of Motley's 
" Dutch Republic." As it turned out. Motley's narra- 
tive follows out one chief thread of Spanish history 
from exactly the point where Prescott's hand was 
stayed by death. 

Thus another brilliant and competent worker found 
his true field. But while Prescott writes serenely, 
like Irving, for his own pleasure and that of the 
reader. Motley has always the most strenuous and 
conscious ethical purpose. He will interrupt his 
narrative, at any time, to point the moral, to declaim. 



THE HISTORIANS 257 

with intolerant heat, against tyranny and bigotry. 
But, with scholarly honesty, he displays fully the 
sources of his statements, which often permit us to 
qualify his severe judgments, or even his excessive 
praise, as in his eulogy of the heroic William the 
Silent. 

This largely planned undertaking was in a sense " Rise of the 
left incomplete. The nine volumes of the " Dutch ^^^^i^g .. 
Republic," "United Netherlands," and "John of 1856. 
Barneveld" form a luminous and connected history Aether, 
of an epoch, but the last is, even in its subtitle, an lands," 1868. 
introduction to the account of the " Thirty Years' Barneveld " 
War " which Motley hoped to complete. As student, 1874. 
diplomatist, investigator. Motley spent much of his 
life abroad. His public life is an interesting chapter 
which we cannot here touch. 

The only later American writer on European his- 
tory deserving to rank with this kindly and illus- 
trious series, Irving, Ticknor, Prescott, Motley, is 
the venerable and learned Henry C. Lea of Phila- Henry 
delphia, whose "History of the Inquisition" and Ch^^esLea, 
kindred works have won universal admiration and 
general acceptance. But it is quite time to turn to 
the authors who have treated our own past. 

Our first creditable historical composition, duly 
based on the best records available, is that " History 
of the Province of Massachusetts Bay " which the 
last royal governor of the colony, Thomas Hutchin- Thomas 
son, brought painfully down to date (1774) in his ^11-1780.°'^' 
English exile, after his house had been sacked, his 
papers scattered to the winds, by a Boston mob. 
This and his other writings give us a high regard 



258 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



Abiel 

Holmes, 

1763-1837. 



Jared 

Sparks, 

1789-1866. 



for the heroic aristocrat and conscientious patriot 
who penned them. We fev:;! lasting regret that this 
native-born Harvard graduate and scholar, with so 
many like him, should have been needlessly driven 
from his home land. 

The earliest general history of our country was the 
"American Annals," covering the years 1492 to 1806, 
of Abiel Holmes, sober father of a most witty son, 
and pastor of the Unitarian church in Cambridge. 
This is described as " well-digested, conveniently 
arranged," even "interesting." 

Jared Sparks, also Unitarian minister, later pro- 
fessor of history and finally president at Harvard, 
has little charm or personal power as a writer. He 
was useful as a collector of historical material. His 
" Life and Writings of Washington," in twelve hand- 
some octavo volumes, was based on prolonged search 
in the state and national archives, besides much 
laborious copying of documents in England and 
France. His equally faithful service to Franklin 
(1840) has now been superseded by Mr. Bigelow's 
work. He also edited the first " Library of Ameri- 
can Biography," in twenty-five volumes (1834 to 
1848), and wrote eight of the lives, the rest being 
supplied by his Boston friends. The gravest fault 
in Sparks's work is the freedom with which he 
" edited " the original documents. We may surely 
demand the very words of a Washington, or of a 
Franklin, however faulty the grammar, the style, or 
even the temper, may appear to his editor. It is only 
fair to add, that Sparks merely followed the usage of 
his time. Absolute accuracy in such things is a 
recent gain indeed, if it be even now assured. 



THE HISTORIANS 259 

Our best-known national historian planned and George 
executed his great work as if he was aware that his ig^iggi 
active career was to extend far beyond the allotted 
years of man. Though the son of a Unitarian clergy- 
man, himself for a time a preacher, whose first book 
was a volume of poetry inspired by Coleridge and 
Wordsworth, he was carried far from these early 
influences. Graduating from Harvard at seventeen, 
" little Bancroft " overtook Ticknor in Gottingen, 
won his degree of Ph.D. there in 1820, knew Hum- 
boldt at Berlin, and even met Goethe. Niebuhr was 
still in Italy, but much as to historical method Ban- 
croft learned from Heeren, whose work on " Greek 
Politics " he later translated. 

His friendships with the great European scholars 
continued unbroken ; but as a democrat, a statesman, a 
cosmopolitan, he passed quite out of the Boston circle 
with its provincial culture and stanch Federalism, 
and in his later years made his home chiefly in Wash- 
ington. He played important political parts, was 
active in acquiring California, as Secretary of the 
Navy in 1847, in settling our northwest boundary 
when minister to Germany in 1871. We have seen 
him making Hawthorne his weigher and ganger in 
the Boston customhouse so early as 1839. His 
literary friendships, like his feuds, were many ; for 
instance, he was active in the rebuilding of Emer- 
son's house after a fire in 1872. 

But especially did Bancroft's large means and 
political power assist the great task of his life. He 
collected a precious library. He employed skilled 
secretaries to aid him in ransacking the archives of 
American capitals, and of other lands. His work will 



260 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

always be indispensable, most of all to those future 
historians who seek to displace it. 

The first volume appeared in 1834. The final 
revision in six volumes, correcting, condensing, and 
in every way improving the original edition in ten, 
was issued in 1884. The period covered is only from 
the discovery of America to the inauguration of 
Washington. The last section, written after the 
Civil War, and describing the period 1783-1789, is 
also the best. 

The tone of the whole work is that of an exultant 
Jacksonian democrat. The most savage critique it 
ever had is the opening sentence of Hildreth's pref- 
ace for his own less lasting history, written from the 
Whig or Federalist point of view : " Of centennial 
sermons and Fourth-of-July orations, whether pro- 
fessedly such or in the guise of history, there are 
more than enough." Too oratorical, boastful, discur- 
sive, Bancroft often is. Washington, in particular, 
he fairly idolizes. His touch is heavy, and rarely 
artistic ; yet the cumulative effect of copious detail 
is very strong, as in the account of April 19, 1775. 
His gravest defect, perhaps, according to the present 
school of historical investigation, is his failure to give 
full documentary evidence, wherewith others may 
correct his own special pleading, and his partial, 
even partisan, view of the facts. Still, this monu- 
mental work claims our lasting gratitude and pride, 
and may yet long remain dominating the vast field. 

As Bancroft is criticised for his excessive and 
boastful Americanism, so Dr. Palfrey is too con- 
stantly the apologist for his section. Yet the story 
of the Puritan can surely be better understood from 



THE HISTORIANS 261 

within than without. His work also, the " History 
of New England from 1620 to 1875," is not yet dis- 
placed. It is not a chronicle of entrancing interest 
to all men, but Professor Wendell's phrase, " minutely 
lifeless," seems unfilial. 

In recent years history is established in high honor 
as a University study, and the American historical 
Review has done much to inculcate the severest scien- 
tific method. Hence the growing prominence of the 
exhaustive monograph. Even for the general reader, 
histories of single commonwealths, biographies of 
statesmen, and similar works, are multiplying. Still, 
such books as Senator Lodge's " American Revolu- Henry 
tion" and President Roosevelt's "Winning of the ^^\ 
West" have at once a scholarly, a literary, and a 1850- 
patriotic character. An extremely interesting and Roosevelt 
prolonged career, whose provincial fame may yet 1858- 
become national, is that of Gayarre, who wrote his- Charles 
tories of Louisiana, both in French and English, f*^^.?"^^ 
Many local specialists, like Mr. Thwaites in Madison, Gayarre', 
are making exhaustive collections which will grow J^^^"^^^^- 
more precious every year. The more comprehensive Gold 
works are usually either written avowedly by a syn- J"^^™^^^' 
dicate of experts, like Justin Winsor's " Narrative 
and Critical History," with its valuable maps and 
illustration generally, or else, like Hubert H. Ban- 
croft's yet more monumental and unfinished " His- 
tory of the Pacific States," are so directly based on 
the labors of a host of paid assistants that the result 
is an encyclopedia rather than a single creation. 

Mr. J. F. Rhodes's account of his own times, since James Ford 
1850, shows that the events of the passing generation ^g^ ^' 
can still be treated with the judicial fairness of Thu- 



262 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

cydides. Perhaps the most valuable contribution to 
our national annals from the new schools of research, 
by a single independent hand, is Henry Adams's 
*' History of the United States," which in nine com- 
pact volumes covers only the years 1801-181T. On 
such a scale the repetition of Livy's achievement is 
no doubt utterly beyond the limits of a single 
lifetime. 

Certainly is it true, that we lack, and need, a com- 
plete history from the settlement of Jamestown to 
the creation of our foreign empire, in a moderate 
series of volumes ; let us say, five or six octavos like 
George Bancroft's. Of course, even the " larger " of 
Colonel Higginson's two works is entirely too small. 
The valuable series of volumes by General Walker, 
Professors Sloane, Fisher, and Burgess is on the whole 
a text-book, and also not perfectly unified. The 
pleasant illustrated essay in popular style bearing 
the name of Bryant, or Scribner, and actually writ- 
ten by Sidney H. Gay, perhaps occupies, but does 
not fill, the gap to which we refer. The single ini- 
tial volume of Mr. Eggleston is hardly enough on 
which to build far-reaching hopes. 

This naturally recalls one of our most recent and 
painful losses, in the death of John Fiske. If such 
men could be produced in numbers, the Lyceum, 
without its intolerant zeal, might be more than re- 
vived ; University Extension, without a trace of pre- 
tentious sciolism, would become popular. Such an 
unwearying and wise absorber, recaster, and ex- 
pounder we shall not soon see again. His earlier 
and later philosophic studies certainly helped to give 
his books on American history the broad perspective 



THE HISTORIANS 263 

of Von Ranke's school. But the chief task of the 
historian, begun somewhat late, doubtless remains a 
large and tantalizing fragment. 

So much the greater is our cause for rejoicing that 
Francis Parkman lived to complete his great work. Francis 
Since his biography has appeared, we know that this 18^23-1893! 
uncomplaining, reserved scholar had a constant ordeal 
at least as severe as Mr. Prescott's, perhaps even more 
agonizing. His journey overland to the West coast 
in 1846 gave him familiar knowledge of Indian life, 
and is recorded in a book much beloved by our boys, 
"The Oregon Trail." But it cost him the heavy 
price of weak eyesight and rheumatic pain to the 
end of his days. Insomnia long threatened to bring 
insanity. Indeed, after the issue of his " Conspiracy 
of Pontiac," in 1851, there was a long series of years 
when historical work was impossible. With his 
indomitable courage he became, even in those wait- 
ing years, a great horticulturist, distinguishing him- 
self especially, as did both Bancroft and Prescott, in 
the perfecting of roses. 

The story of the long contest between French and 
English, for the possession of this continent, was 
however always before his mind. Yet even when 
the opening section of the main work, "Pioneers 
of France in the New World," had been issued in 
1865, he passed cautiously on from one monograph 
to another, with little confidence of reaching the 
goal. Indeed even now we realize that a some- 
what closer linking of those dramatic scenes, a 
fuller connection with the general history of Europe 
and the world, would no doubt still have been added 
in a leisurely revision. 



264 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

But the eighteen volumes form a completer and 
nobler monument than any other our literature of 
scholarship can show. The task need not, indeed 
cannot, be done again by any later hand. More 
than that, we can hardly wish or imagine any other 
treatment of this material, down to the last detail of 
style or arrangement. The whole story now seems 
full of romantic and thrilling interest, but Mr. Fiske, 
in his happy introduction, shows us clearly how Park- 
man had in large measure to convert his reluctant 
audience. In that respect, and in others, his triumph 
over obstacles within and without seems even more 
marvelous than Prescott's. Francis Parkman is 
hailed by general consent of critics and the reading 
public as our greatest historian, as one of our four 
or five supreme literary artists. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Prescott's Histories, 15 vols., Lippincott. Motley's Histories, 
9 vols.. Harper. H. C. Lea's "Inquisition," 3 vols., Harper. 
Bancroft's " History," 6 vols., Appleton. Palfrey's " History of 
New England," 5 vols.. Little. Lodge's ''Story of Revolution," 
2 vols., Scribner. Roosevelt's "Winning of the West," 4 vols., 
Putnam. Fiske's "New England," "Old Virginia," "Dutch 
and Quaker Colonies," "Revolution," "Critical Period," etc., 
Houghton. Parkman's " Histories," 12 vols.. Little. 

A vivid picture of vanished Western conditions will be found 
in Parkman's " Oregon Trail," as in Irving's " Captain Bonne- 
ville " and " Tour of the Prairies." 

See also especially Professor J. F. Jameson's " History of His- 
torical Writing in America" and Professor A. B. Hart's " Guide 
to the Study of American History." On these two books the 
present chapter leans heavily. Governor Hutchinson, a pathetic 
and noble figure, has been sympathetically treated by his biog- 
rapher. Professor James K. Hosmer. 



CHAPTER YH 
THE ORATORS 

STILL more than the historian should the orator 
be a master of artistic form, both in word or 
phrase, and in the larger construction of his entire 
plea. But he uses these resources under peculiar 
conditions, which fall away if his mere words are 
preserved upon the printed page. Even the first 
speech against Catiline, as we read it, was composed 
and revised long after in the study. Cicero's master- 
piece, the second Philippic, was never delivered at all. 

The orator, as such, is merely the speaker. On a 
special occasion, to a limited audience, he appeals in 
order to sway their feeling, usually their action, upon 
the question of the hour. Of course the results may 
be endless in importance and duration. Yet his long 
career might be fully and nobly run, while no 
uttered word of his was ever recorded, by himself 
or by others, for the after time. In such a case he 
would stand quite outside the history of literature. 
His life's results, in the form of civic action, would 
be embedded, perchance even lost to sight, in the 
general upbuilding of his people or of mankind. 

This fate has all but overtaken some protagonists Oratory of 
in our Revolution, when orators played far larsfer *?e^y<>^^: 

' jr J & tion a tradi- 

and more heroic parts in the national drama than tion only, 
may ever again be assigned them. Patrick Henry 
and James Otis, like Pericles and Gorgias, barely 

265 



266 THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 

appear in literature, as stately traditional figures, 
helped out by clever and pious fiction. A speech 
put by Webster into John Adams's mouth has out- 
lived in the popular memory every word he actually 
uttered. Though Adams made a brave and successful 
legal plea for the soldiers who had but acted in self- 
defense in the " Boston massacre," it is only the 
rhetorical apotheosis of Crispus Attucks, and the 
other lawless "martyrs," by Warren, that is still 
remembered and recited. 

A speech, as delivered, even if accurately reported, 
Webster's is rarely literary in form. Webster's second reply to 
reply to Havne is widely accepted as the supreme effort of 

Hayne,1830. -^ ^ . . ;\ \.i. 

American eloquence. Certain passages are doubt- 
less still familiar to every schoolboy, and may really 
have been, as is often asserted, the sheet anchors of 
Union sentiment ever since. Even the central theme, 
that no formal action of citizen, state, or section, no 
power short of popular revolution, can nullify the 
decrees of our national government, is surely large 
and far-reaching enough. But the speech itself, 
though its thirty thousand words would make a 
moderate volume, was an episode in a senatorial 
debate on the survey and sale of public lands. On 
every page are allusions which can be understood 
only by painful study of politics, persons, temporary 
conditions, long since forgotten. Hence it is read 
with interest, or read at all, as a whole, by very few. 
Nevertheless, there are important contributions to 
our literature by orators, which can be best under- 
stood in connection with their professional careers. 
Professor Richardson names twelve men of national 
fame for eloquence since the Revolution : Randolph, 



THE ORATORS 267 

Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Choate, Everett, Winthrop, 
Seward, Garrison, Phillips, Sumner, and Lincoln. 
Not all these are even familiar names to-day. 

The thin figure and piercing voice of John Randolph John 
of Roanoke has vanished the faster from, popular mem- S,7^*^.°o?? 
ory because, like Calhoun after him, he was the cham- 
pion of the lost cause. Born a slaveholder, deploring 
the institution which impoverished his section, he yet 
felt that of the representatives of the free states " not 
one possesses the slightest tie of common feeling or 
of common interest with us." In the national Capi- 
tol itself he dared to exclaim : " However high we 
may carry our heads and strut and fret our hour, 
' dressed in a little brief authority,' it i§ in the power 
of the states to extinguish this government at a blow." 

Calhoun also, his life long, avowed frankly his johnCaid- 
allegiance to his state, or at most to his section, 
regarding the union as a mere expedient, to be aban- 1850. 
doned whenever it ceased to serve the interests of 
his real country. He is a gallant and loyal figure, 
as he recedes and fades from our view, like the 
French aristocrat of the old regime. We can admire 
his courage, but it is no longer easy even to recall 
his position. His cold, clear, logical style has its 
unique merits, though they are hardly oratorical. 
Like his political doctrines, his forms of utterance 
deserve careful study, but will never be revived or 
closely imitated; He is the second, but not a close 
second, among our political orators of the nineteenth 
century. 

Henry Clay, the idol of his section and party for a Henry Clay, 
half century, had a unique personal charm, which has 
not lingered in his published words to any adequate 



well Cal- 
houn, 1782- 



1777-1852. 



268 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



Daniel 

Webster, 
1782-1852. 



Oration at 
Bunker Hill, 
June 17, 
1825. 



Plymouth 

Oration, 

1820. 



extent. Indeed, to our permanent literature he is a 
far less important contributor than Calhoun. His 
own nature and the position of his border state made 
compromise, pacification, mediation, his lifelong role. 
It is the extremists that are best remembered. 

There can be no question as to the supreme 
importance of Webster in our oratory. Born and 
educated in poverty, he early became the leading 
lawyer of his native New Hampshire, and then of 
the Boston bar. His national career, as representa- 
tive, senator, and Secretary of State, began in 1813 
and lasted to the end. Inconsistent and wavering 
on some questions, Webster always gave his voice 
and vote to strengthen and preserve the federal 
Union. There is a splendid and sincere egotism, 
justified by the Jovelike nature of the man, in such 
passages as the thrice familiar " When my eyes shall 
be turned for the last time to behold the sun in 
heaven." He has given the name of Websterian to 
his own literary style, so stately in its simplicity, so 
suited to his clear, earnest, consistent thought, to his 
massive frame, great, cavernous eyes, and voice of 
thunder, that neither portentous length of periods 
nor freest use of polysyllabic words could make it 
seem other than fit and natural to the orator himself. 

Especially familiar to sons of New England is his 
apostrophe to the living veterans of Bunker Hill, 
actually present fifty years after the battle, at the 
laying of the corner stone of the monument. For 
such occasions as this and the speech on the Plym- 
outh Pilgrims, indeed, the most picturesque rhetoric 
justifies itself when heard, and also upon the printed 
page, if only it successfully sets before us the original 



THE ORATORS 269 

scene. And certainly to us, also, those "venerable 
men" do visibly come down from that memorable 
day. Indeed, the personality of Webster, perhaps 
the most imposing man of our race, is so familiar to 
us through tradition, painting, and sculpture, if not 
from memory, that we still see and hear him as he 
points the finger of Fate at the trembling murderer, Trial of the 
and thunders forth the words : " There is no escape ^gso^^^' 
from confession, save suicide : and suicide is confes- 
sion ! " His whole description of that murder is a 
masterpiece of imaginative word painting, with remi- 
niscences of Macbeth glimmering here and there. 

But, after all, it is not as a maker of phrases that 
Daniel Webster will be longest remembered, but as 
Hamilton's successor as the defender of the federal 
Constitution. Even his famous plea before the Su- 
preme Court for his little Alma Mater, Dartmouth Dartmouth 
College, created the important precedent that the ^oHegecase 
central government could enforce the observance by 
the several states of such implied contracts through 
charters as it had in this case been proposed to 
cancel. So when he refused to join the Free-Soil 
movement and gave in his adhesion to Clay's last 
compromise with the slave power, he was no doubt 
chiefly influenced by the longing to preserve the 
federation of states. If he did foresee the inevitable 
rupture, and merely desired, as he had said, to look 
with dying eyes on an unbroken Union, yet it is also 
true that his action, firmly taken against the known 
disapproval of New England, did postpone the war 
for a decade, while the North and West meantime 
increased decisively in wealth and population. As 
a great piece of oratory in itself, as the occasion for 



270 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



March 7, 
1850. 



Wendell 
Phillips, 
1811-1884. 



Charles 
Sumner, 
1811-1874. 



Whittier's " Ichabod," as largely the inciting cause 
also of Mrs. Stowe's romance, this " Seventh of 
March Speech " may properly be mentioned here ; 
but it only emphasizes the conclusion that Webster 
is a large figure rather in our history than in our 
literature. Who of us ever read the speech itself? 
The romance is familiar to all. 

Wendell Phillips is the ideal and type of the aris- 
tocratic radical. Closely allied in kinship and in 
friendship with all the bluest blood and most exclu- 
sive culture of Boston, he cast in his lot with the little 
despised and persecuted group about Garrison, not 
merely without an instant's hesitation, but with 
eager delight. Mob violence, real peril of an igno- 
minious death, could alone bring to him the true zest 
of life. Indeed, unless he could have a violently 
hostile audience to subdue to silence, and finally to 
entrance into delighted and even approving atten- 
tion, the splendid powers of the man were not thor- 
oughly awakened. A demagogue he could never 
be, for, to the end of his stormy days, wherever many 
men agreed with him, he felt oppressed as Daniel 
Boone by incoming settlers. Perhaps the finest 
literary effort of his life is his Phi Beta Kappa ora- 
tion at Harvard, "The Scholar in a Republic." Even 
there he first antagonized and then conquered his 
audience, for he arraigned the college-bred man as 
habitually derelict to the highest ideals of citizenship. 
He was a happy Rough Rider, and never lost his 
delight in the strife. 

Charles Sumner could have been Story's worthy 
successor on the bench or in the Harvard Law 
School. He might have been a scholarly and in- 



THE ORATORS 271 

defatigable student, probably a writer, also, of his- 
tory, like Motley. He was potentially all these 
things, indeed, before his gift for public speaking, 
and his moral enthusiasm for the crusade against 
slavery, drew him reluctantly into national politics. 

His virulence in debate with Southern opponents 
was rhetorical, and, as it were, doctrinal, not really 
personal in feeling. He preached against slave- 
holders, as intolerantly as Cotton Mather against 
heretics. A study of his senatorial speeches would 
make more intelligible what nothing, of course, can 
justify : the attempt to silence him by the bludgeon. 
But he was always homesick for Ticknor's library, 
for Felton's lost friendship, for the social life among 
cultivated Bostonians, for the old studious quiet of 
the Law School. Sumner was never successful in 
his personal relations with men of diverse types and 
interests. It is as a scholarly essayist that he enters 
the gate of literature. Perhaps his first public 
speech, his fearless Fourth of July condemnation of 
all wars and warriors, called "The True Grandeur 
of Nations," is also his most lasting utterance. 

Rufus Choate was famous, like Macaulay, for his Rufus 
marvelous memory and loquacity. He had a brief ^7^5^59 
congressional career, was long a leader of the bar, 
a sparkling wit, a classical scholar, and an unweary- 
ing reader. Like Webster, Everett, Winthrop, and 
the scholarly Bostonians generally, he persistently 
refused to follow the rest of New England into the 
antislavery crusade, and, like Webster, died too 
early to be reunited with his people by the outbreak 
of civil war. His elaborate style is perhaps a valua- 
ble curiosity of literature. 



272 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



William 
Henry 
Seward, 
1801-1872. 



Robert 
Charles 
Winthrop, 
180£^-1894. 



Edward 
Everett, 
1794^1865. 



Seward is remembered as the creator of certain 
phrases like "the irrepressible conflict," rather than 
for his memorable utterance of them. Indeed, few 
would now reckon him among our prominent orators 
at all. 

Robert C. Winthrop, the biographer of his more 
famous ancestor, was throughout his long life a 
public-spirited citizen, a student especially of New 
England history, a favorite speaker on memorial 
occasions. He illustrates the possible usefulness and 
happiness of an aristocratic nature in a democracy. 

Far better known nationally is Edward Everett. 
It is rather amusing to note that he too began his 
career, at nineteen, as a Unitarian clergyman. We 
have seen him already as Ticknor's companion soon 
after in Gottingen, and his Greek colleague at Har- 
vard. This position also he soon abandoned, to 
enter politics in 1825. He was later governor of 
Massachusetts, president of Harvard, Secretary of 
State. Finally, he was vice-presidential candidate on 
one of the three tickets opposed to Lincoln in the 
fall of 1860. 

But Mr. Everett is known above all as our highest 
example of physical and mental charm and refine- 
ment, as a master of dazzling rhetoric, as the most 
graceful, finished, and artificial of orators. Emerson 
has left a glowing description of him as a young col- 
lege professor, when he seemed to the raw, boyish 
students the embodiment of elegant scholarship. 
But the characteristic deadly thrust is added, that 
he was never suspected of originating an idea. 

Everett's last public appearance is the most strik- 
ing of all. His oration at Gettysburg, when the 



THE ORATORS 273 

national cemetery was dedicated, occupied several November, 
hours in delivery, had been most elaborately pre- 
pared, and seemed to his hearers one of the chief 
triumphs of his career.* Then Mr. Lincoln spoke 
for less than five minutes, touching the deeper mean- 
ing of the occasion with all the simple mastery of an 
inspired lyric poet. It appears to us now as if then 
and there had occurred the sudden passing of an 
oratorical style, the unforeseen close of an epoch in 
taste : for few of us have ever read or seen Everett's 
speech ; most of us know Lincoln's by heart, as Mr. Abraham 
Everett promptly and chivalrously prophesied. Yet ^"^^1865. 
of course no such instantaneous change was possible. 
Lincoln had simply struck, with infinitely more skill 
and mastery, the unique note of the hour and place, 
setting them in their true relation to the eternal 
forces of life. The second inaugural is hardly less 
a masterpiece. 

But it is undoubtedly a fact, that the influence of 
political oratory, at least, has waned decisively since 
the day, not merely of Otis and Warren, but of 
Webster, Calhoun, and Clay. The causes are in 
part the rise of the newspaper and the telegraph. 
The debater in Congress nowadays has already given 
his manuscript to the Associated Press, and is chiefly 
concerned that what he might have said shall be 
duly spread next morning on the breakfast table of 
his constituents, or even of the country. 

On questions of general and permanent policy, 
both daily papers and weekly or monthly magazines 
keep up unceasing debate. The lack of such agen- 
cies multiplied the power of the living voice in the 
Revolutionary epoch. Even in the years of the anti- 



274 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



slavery agitation, such a paper as the Liberator^ 
poems like Whittier's or Hosea Biglow's, a romance 
like " Uncle Tom's Cabin," were doubtless more in- 
fluential than any spokeil words. Still, personal 
magnetism will never lose its charm. In particular, 
the peculiar conditions under which our presidential 
candidates are nominated still recall vividly the ear- 
lier days. No longer ago than 1896 a single burst 
of rhetoric took a national convention by storm. 
Every town meeting may have a similar experience. 

But, as a rule, in our comparatively settled and 
crowded social life, the motives of self-interest grow 
more complex, and men refuse to be swept to instant 
decision and emotional action. Where no serious 
doubt or deep-seated difference of opinion bars the 
way, men's feelings can still be inflamed by the de- 
vices of rhetoric and elocution. The court room, for 
instance, and the church remain as free fields for per- 
sonal appeal. 

Theodore Parker and Henry Ward Beecher are 
perhaps the most famous masters of pulpit oratory, 
which usually presupposes devoted and submissive 
hearers. Yet both were at least as willing to face a 
hostile audience, and to champion an unfashionable 
and dangerous cause, as they did, in particular, in 
the early Abolitionist days. The pervasive, benig- 
nant influence of Phillips Brooks, not limited to any 
religious, sectional, or even national line, was in a 
degree oratorical. His published essays, both purely 
religious and relatively secular, are exquisitely 
literary, often highly poetic in quality. They are 
full of vitality and force, even for those men who 
cannot supply from memory the monumental pres- 



THE ORATORS 275 

ence, the impetuous rushing tones, of the great 
preacher. In his optimism, his humanism, his 
patriotic and philanthropic zeal, Bishop Brooks was 
a true successor of Channing. Both have relatively 
humble places in our literature, yet their influence 
is felt constantly in the air we breathe. That is 
merely saying that literature, or any fine art, is but 
a partial expression of life. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Calhoun's Works, in 6 vols. Life by Von Hoist in American 
Statesmen Series, Houghton. Life of Clay by Schurz in same 
series. Daniel Webster's "Works," 6 vols.. Little. "Life," by 
George Tickuor Curtis, 2 vols., Appleton. "Life," by H. C. 
Lodge, Houghton. There is an excellent brief account of Web- 
ster by Carl Schurz in the Warner " Library of the World's Best 
Literature." " Randolph of Roanoke," a poem by Whittier. 
" Scholar in a Republic," by Wendell Phillips, Lee. " Speeches, 
Lectures, and Letters" of Phillips, 2 vols., Lee. "Works "of 
Charles Sumner, 15 vols., Lee. " Charles Sumner," a memorial 
oration, by Carl Schurz, Lee. " Orations " of Everett, 4 vols.. 
Little. "Lincoln," complete vrorks, Nicolay and Hay, 2 vols.. 
Century. " Speeches," by Chittenden, Dodd. Phillips Brooks's 
"Essays and Addresses," Dutton. "Sermons," Button. Ran- 
dolph, Calhoun, and Clay are peculiarly picturesque figures, 
but hardly in our field. Professor W. P. Trent has a happy 
subject in his " Southern Statesmen of the Old Regime." 

SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASSROOM WORK 

The historical importance of Webster's Dartmouth College 
speech and reply to Hayne may be most fully understood from 
Lodge's account. The Bunker Hill and Plymouth orations 
should be read entire. 

The scene at Gettysburg is a peculiarly dramatic one. The 
extraordinary force of Lincoln's oratory should be fully ex- 
plained, if possible. Every schoolboy should know the speech 
by heart, and be perfectly familiar with the Second Inaugural 
oration. 



276 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES — (1830-1870) 



1831-1840 



American History 



American Literatoie 



1833. Nullification in South Caro- 
lina. 



1831. Jan. 1, First number of Gar- 
rison's Liberator. 

Poe's Poems. 

Whittier's " Legends of New 

England." 

Paulding's "Dutchman's 

Fireside." 

1832. Irving's *' Alhambra." 
Paulding's " Westward Ho." 

1833. Mrs. Child's "Appeal for 
Africans." 

Whittier's "Justice and Ex- 
pediency." 

Longfellow's " Outre-Mer." 
Story's " Commentaries on 
the Constitution." 

1834. Paulding's "Life of Wash- 
ington." 

1835. William Ellery Channing's 
"Slavery." 

Drake's " Culprit Fay." 
Kennedy's "Horseshoe Rob- 
inson." 

Simms's "Yemassee," and 
" Partisan." 

1836. Mrs. Child's " Philothea." 
Emerson's " Nature." 
Gray's " Botany." 

First Meetings of Transcen- 
dental Club. 

1837. Emerson's Phi Beta Kappa 
oration, "The American." 
Hawthorne's " Twice-told 
Tales." 

Prescott's "Ferdinand and 
Isabella." 

1838. Cooper's " Homeward 
Bound," " Home as Found." 
Lowell's Class Poem. 

1839. W. E. Channing's "Self- 
Culture." 

Cooper's "History of the 
United States Navy." 
Longfellow's "Hyperion," 
"Voices of the Night." 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



277 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES — (1830-1870) 



1831-1840 



Englisli and European Literature 



English and European History 



1831. Goethe's "Faust 
pleted. 

1832. Death of Goethe. 



1833. Carlyle's " Sartor Eesartus." 
Browning's " Pauline." 
Newman's "Tracts for the 
Times." 

Tennyson's Poems. 

1834. Dickens's " Sketches by 
Boz." 

1835. Browning's "Paracelsus." 

1836. Dickens's "Pickwick." 
Marryat's "Midshipman 
Easy." 

1837. Dickens's " Oliver Twist." 
Carlyle's "French Revolu- 
tion." 

Thackeray's " Yellowplush 
Papers." 

1838. Dickens's " Nicholas Nickle- 
by." 



1832. Reform Bill passed by Pai> 
liament. 



1837. Accession of Victoria^ 



278 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



1831-1840- 


— Continued 


American History 


American Literature 




1840. Cooper's " Pathfinder." 

R. H. Dana, Jr.'s "Two 
Years Before the Mast." 
Lowell's " A Year's Life." 

1840-1844. The i»iaZ, edited by Mar- 
garet Fuller, afterward by 
Emerson. 

1840. Brook Farm Community or- 
ganized. 



1841-1850 



1842. Ashburton Treaty, fixing 
our northern boundary. 



1844. First telegraph line, from 
Washington to Baltimore. 



1845. Admission of Texas. 



1846. Ether used in Massachusetts 
Hospital. 

1846-1847. War with Mexico. An- 
nexation of California. 



Ex- 



1841. Emerson's Essays, I. 
Longfellow's Ballads. (' 
celsior.") 
New York Tribune. 

1842. Emerson's "Threnody." 
Longfellow's Poems on Slav- 
ery. 

Bryant's " Foiintain." 
Cooper's " Wing-and- Wing. " 

1843. Longfellow's "Spanish Stu- 
dent." 

Poems of W. E. Channing, 2d. 
T. W. Parson's " Dante's In- 
ferno," Nos. I-X. 
Prescott's "Mexico." 

1844. Mrs. Child's "Flowers for 
Children." 

Emerson's Essays, II. 
Margaret Fuller's "Woman 
in the Nineteenth Century." 

1845. Poe's "Raven." 
Judd's "Margaret." 
Lowell's " Conversations on 
Poets." 
Simms's 
Cabin." 

1846. Cooper's 
Officers.'' 
Bayard 
Afoot." 
Longfellow's 
Bruges." 
Worcester's "Dictionary." 
Sumner's Phi Beta Kappa 
Oration. 



" Wigwam and 
"Lives of Naval 
Taylor's " Views 
" Bellrey of 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



279 



1831-1840 — Continued 



English and Enropean Literature 



English and Enropean History 



184C Dickens's "Old Curiosity 
Shop." 
Browning's "Sordello." 



1840. Penny Postage in Great 
Britain. 



1841-1850 



1841. Carlyle's " Hero Worship." 
Hugh Miller's "Old Red 
Sandstone." 

Boucicault's " London As- 
surance." 

Punch founded. 

1842. Dickens's "American Notes." 
Macaulay's " Lays." 
Darwin's "Coral Reefs." 
George Sa7id's " Consuelo." 

1843. Browning's " Blot on the 
Scutcheon." 

Carlyle's "Past and Pres- 
ent." 

Dickens's " Martin Chuzzle- 
wit" and "Christmas Carol." 
Mill's "Logic." 
1843-1860. Ruskin's "Modern 
Painters." 

1844. Stanley's "Life of Arnold." 
Thackeray's "Barry Lyn- 
don." 

1845. Carlyle's " Cromwell." 

1846. Grote's " Greece," VoL L 



1846. Abolition of the Corn Laws. 



280 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



1841-1850 — Continued 



American History- 



American Literature 



1847. Salt Lake City founded by 
the Mormons. 



1849. Grold discovered in Califor- 
nia. 



1850. Fugitive Slave Law, as part 
of Clay's last compromise. 



1847. Longfellow's " Evangeline." 
Prescott's "Peru." 
Melville's " Omoo." 

1848. Gayarre's "Romance of the 
History of Louisiana." 
Lowell's " Biglow Papers," 
First Series, "Fable for 
Critics," and " Sir Launfal." 
Cary Sisters' Poems. 
Hildreth's " History," Vol. I. 
Irving's "Goldsmith." 
Thoreau's "Concord and 
Merrimac." 

Ticknor's "Spanish Litera- 
ture." 

Hawthorne's " Scarlet Let- 
ter." 

Webster's Seventh of March 
Speech. 

Emerson's "Representative 
Men," 

Irving's " Mahomet." 
Longfellow's "Seaside and 
Fireside." 

D. G. Mitchell's " Reveries of 
a Bachelor." 

Whittier's " Songs of Labor " 
and " Ichabod." 
Harper's Magazine founded. 
Miss Warner's " Wide, Wide 
World." 



1849. 



1850. 



1851-1860 



1851. Hawthorne's "House of 
Seven Gables," "Wonder- 
Book," "Snow Image." 
Longfellow's " Golden Leg- 
end." 

D. G. Mitchell's "Dream 
Life." 

Parkman's " Pontiac." 
Schoolcraft's "Indian 
Tribes." 

Lossing's " Fieldbook of the 
Revolution." 
Curtis 's "Nile Notes." 

1851-1852. Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle 
Tom's Cabin." 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



281 



1841-1850 — Continued 



Englisli and European Literature 



English and Eoropean History 



1847. Charlotte Broute's " Jane 
Eyre." 

Tennyson's "Princess." 
Thackeray's "Vanity Fair." 

1848. Clough's " Bothie." 
Mill's "Political Economy." 
Dickens's "David Copper- 
field." 

Thackeray's " Pendennis." 
Raskin's "Seven Lamps of 
Architecture." 
Tennyson's "In Memoriam." 
Mrs. Browning's " Sonnets 
from the Portuguese." 
Newman's "Phases of 
Faith." 



1849. 



1850. 



1848. Revolution at Paris. Ex- 
pulsion of Louis Philippe. 



1851-1860 



1851. Mrs. Browning's "CasaGuidi 
Windows." 
Kingsley's "Yeast." 
Ruskin's " Stones of Ven- 
ice," I. 



282 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



1S51-IS60 — Continued 



American History 



American Literature 



1852. Death of Webster and Clay. 



1854. Repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise. Slavery question 
left to inhabitants of each 
new state. 

1854-1859. Civil war in Kansas be- 
tween proslavery and free 
settlers. 



1852. 



Blithedale 



1856. Assault on Charles Sumner 
in the Senate chamber. 



1857. Dred Scott decision. 
Business panic. 



1859. John Brown seizes Harper's 
Ferry. Is captured and exe- 
cuted. 

Petroleum fovmd in Pennsyl- 
vania. 

1860. November, election of Lin- 
coln. 

December 20, secession of 
South Carolina. 



Hawthorne's 
Romance." 

1853. Theodore Parker's " Theism, 
Atheism, and Popular The- 
ology." 

Choate's "Eulogy on Web- 
ster." 

1854. Thoreau's " Walden." 
Bayard Taylor's "Poems of 
the Orient." 
Longfellow's "Hiawatha." 



1855. J. S. C. Abbott's " History of 
Napoleon." 

T. S. Arthur's '* Ten Nights 
in a Barroom." 
Frederick Douglass's "My 
Bondage and My Freedom." 
Ingraham's "Prince of the 
House of David." 

1855-1858. Prescott's "Life of 
Philip II." 

1855-1859. Irving's " Life of Wash- 
ington." 

1856. Motley 's * ' Dutch Republic . ' ' 
Boker's "Plays and Poems." 
Curtis's " Prue and I." 
Emerson's " English Traits." 
Mrs. Stowe's "Dred." 

1857. F. J. Child's "English and 
Scottish Ballads," Vol. I. 
November, first number of 
Atlantic Monthly. 

1858. Longfellow's "Miles Stand- 
ish." 

Holland's "Bittersweet." 
Dr. Holmes's "Autocrat of 
the Breakfast Table." 



1860. Emerson's " Conduct of 
Life." 

Hawthorne's "Marble 
Faun." 

Motley's " United Nether- 
lands." 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



283 



1851-1860 — Continued 



English and European Literature 



English and European History 



1852. 

1853. 

1854. 
1855. 



Henry Es- 



..peg 



1856. 



1857. 



1858. 



1859. 



1860. 



Thackeray's 
mond," 

Charles Reade's 
Woffington." 
Thackeray's "English Hu- 
morists." 

Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford." 
Thackeray's " Newcomes." 
Dickens's " Hard Times." 
Browning's "Men and 
Women." 

Dickens's "Little Dorrit." 
Kingsley's "Westward Ho." 
Tennyson's " Maud." 
Spencer's " Psychology." 
Mil man's " Latin Chris- 
tianity." 

Mrs. Browning's "Aurora 
Leigh." 

Fronde's " England," Vols. I 
and II. 

Mrs. Craik's * ' John Halifax.' ' 
Hughes's "Tom Brown's 
Schooldays." 

Thackeray's "Virginians." 
Buckle's "History of Civili- 
zation," Vol. I. 
Carlyle's "Frederick the 
Great." 

George Eliot's "Scenes of 
Clerical Life." 
William Morris's "Defense 
of Guinevere." 
Tennyson's "Idylls of the 
King." 

Dickens's "Tale of Two 
Cities." 

George Eliot's "AdamBede." 
Fitzgerald's " Omar Khay- 
yam." 

Meredith's "Richard Fev- 
erel." 

Mill, "On Liberty." 
Darwin's "Origin of Species." 
George Eliot's "Mill on the 
Floss." 

Collins's ' ' Woman in White.' ' 
Owen Meredith's "Lucile." 
Reade's "Cloister and 
Hearth." 
Tolstoi's "War and Peace." 



1852. Napoleon III becomes em- 
peror. 

1853-1856. Crimean War. 



1857-1858. Indianmutiny. 



284 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



1861-1870 



American History 



American Literature 



1861. Secession of eleven states. 
1861-1865. Civil War. 

1861. Fall of Fort Sumter. 
Battle of Bull Run. 

1862. Farragut at New Orleans. 



1863. Emancipation Proclamation. 
1863. July 4, Grant at Vicksburg. 

Battle of Gettysburg. 

French in Mexico. 



1866. Surrender of Lee. 

Abolition of slavery. 
Murder of Lincoln. 



1867. Maximilian shot in Mexico. 



1868. Impeachment of President 
Johnson fails. 



1861. Holmes's " Elsie Venner." 
Winthrop's " Cecil Dreeme.' 



1862. Mrs. Stowe's " Agnes of Sor- 
rento." 

Story's " Roba di Roma." 
Winthrop's "John Brent" 
and " Canoe and Saddle." 

1863. Longfellow's "Wayside 
Inn." 

Hawthorne's "Our Old 
Home." 

Higginson's " Outdoor Pa- 
pers." 

Bayard Taylor's "Hannah 
Thurston." 

1863. Trowbridge's "Cudjo's 
Cave." 

Winthrop's " Life in the 
Open Air." 

Lincoln's Speech at Gettys- 
burg, Nov. 19th. 

1864. Lowell's " Fireside Travels." 
Thoreau's "Maine Woods." 
Boker's War Poems. 

1865. Lowell's " Commemoration 
Ode." 

Thoreau's "Cape Cod." 
Parkman's "Pioneers of 
France." 

1866. Whittier's " Snow-Bound." 
Taylor's " Kennett." 
Howells's "Venetian Life." 

1867. Emerson's " May Day.'' 
Holmes's " Guardian Angel." 
Longfellow's " Dante." 
Parson's " Dante's Inferno." 
Norton's "Dante's Vita 
Nuova." 

Whittier's "Tent on the 

Beach." 

Lowell's "Biglow Papers," II. 

Whitney's " Language." 

L^a's "Sacerdotal Celibacy." 

Parkman's "Jesuits in North 

America." 

1868. Longfellow's " New England 
Tragedies." 

Hale's "Man without a 
Country." 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



285 



1861-1870 



English and European Literature 

1861. Thackeray's " Philip." 
George Eliot's "Silas Mar- 
ner." 

Maine's "Ancient Law." 
Mill's "Representative Gov- 
ernment." 

1862. Victor Hugo's " Les Mis^ra- 
bles." 

1863. George Eliot's "Romola." 
^o^. Kingsley's "Water Babies." 

1864. Tennyson's "Enoch Arden." 
Swinburne's " Atalanta." 
Dickens's " Mutual Friend." 

,oz> Newman's "Apologia." 

1865. Carroll's " Alice in Wonder- 
land." 

Meredith's "Rhoda Flem- 
ing." 

Seeley's "Ecce Homo." 
Arnold's "Essays in Criti- 
cism." 

1866. George Eliot's " Felix Holt." 
Bryce's "Holy Roman Em- 
pire." 

Swinburne's " Poems and 
Ballads." 

Victor Hugo's "Toilers of 
the Sea." 

Freeman's "Norman Con- 
quest." 

1867. William Morris's "Jason." 

1868. William Morris's "Earthly 
Paradise." 

George Eliot's " Spanish 

Gypsy." 

Browning's "The Ring and 

the Book." 



English and European History 



1861. Emancipation of Russian 
serfs. 

Victor Emanuel king of 

Italy. ^ 



1866. War between Prussia and 
Austria. 
Italians occupy Venice. 



286 



THE NEW ENGLAND PERIOD 



1861-1870 — Continued 



American History 



American Literature 



1869-1877. Grant president. 



1868. Greeley's "Recollections." 
Miss Alcott's "Little 
Women." 

Miss Phelps's " Gates Ajar." 

1869. Twain's "Innocents 
Abroad." 

Higginson's " Army Life in 
a Black Regiment." 
Parkman's "La Salle." 

1870. Bret Harte's " Luck of Roar- 
ing Camp." 

Lowell's "Cathedral" and 
" Among my Books." 
Bryant's " Iliad." 
Taylor's "Faust," Part I. 
Warner's "Summer in a 
Garden." 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



287 



1861-1870 — Continued 



English and European Literature 



English and European History 



1869. Blackmore's^LornaDoone." 
Arnold's "Culture and An- 
archy." 

1870. Dante Rossetti's Poems. 



1870. Franco-Prussian War. 
Fall of Napoleon HI. 
Republic in France. 



PART III 
THE NATIONAL EPOCH 



CHAPTER I 
GENERAL CONDITIONS 

WE have seen, that throughout the seventeenth 
century and most of the eighteenth, our seri- 
ous culture and literary utterance were to be found, 
if at all, chiefly in theocratic and democratic New 
England. The epoch of revolution brought to the 
front a notable group of statesmen, orators, publicists, 
mostly bred in the more aristocratic conditions of 
Virginia. Benjamin Franklin, shrewd and thrifty, 
practical-minded student of human nature and of 
science, is the first large and truly national figure 
in our literature. His flight from Boston is less 
important than his revolt against the narrowing 
Puritanism of the Mathers. His time was perhaps 
an age of action so strenuous and all-absorbing that 
the imagination could hardly claim its rights. 

The early decades of the nineteenth century found 
us still English, indeed still timidly provincial, in all 
save political relations. Even the creative artists. 
Brown, Irving, Cooper, began by avowedly copying 
English models, good or bad. They, and their 
friends, however, clearly indicate that in and about 
New York something like genial conditions for litera- 
ture earliest appeared. 

But meanwhile the generation of Channing in 
New England was bursting the outgrown fetters of 

291 



292 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

the spirit. Without losing aught of serious devo- 
tion or unresting energy, the home-keeping children 
of the Puritans began to throw much of their force 
into free thought and its artistic expression. So the 
group led by Emerson and closed by Lowell were 
long the masters in American letters. It was a 
growth from deep and firm local roots, as nearly all 
the materials of Hawthorne's art, the whole career 
of Whittier, the Biglow poems, constantly illus- 
trate. It is the clearest mark of Lowell's great- 
ness, that he dropped his "pack of 'isms," outgrew 
his earlier limitations to become the poet, orator, 
the welcome ambassador plenipotentiary, of our 
national character, culture, and letters to Spain, to 
England, to the world. 

The epoch here indicated as the New England 
period opens about 1830, and its peculiar energy was 
merged at last into the far greater upheaval of the 
Civil War. In those very decades, the largest out- 
ward activity was the winning of the West ; but 
even that took largely the form of a struggle between 
the peculiar institution of the South and the anti- 
slavery convictions of New England. Not only free 
Kansas, but the other free states of the Northwest, 
were its visible result. When the actual appeal to 
arms came, the overwhelming force of the West over- 
balanced the gains of slave territory from the Mexi- 
can War, and decided the issue. Before the strife 
ended, the center of population, the political power, 
had shifted far away from both the older sections : 
from Baltimore toward southern Indiana. Lincoln, 
indeed, was a providential accident, a compromise 
candidate, elected against a divided majority. But 



GENERAL CONDITIONS 298 

it is no mere accident, that of all our presidents 
chosen since, one has come from western New York> 
the rest from the central West. 

These last three decades (1870-1900) are doubt- 
less no less epochal. The political results of the war 
are assured. There is to be but one Anglo-Saxon 
nation on this continent. At the very close of the 
century, the brief struggle with Spain has left us 
one happy result, in effacing all vestige of hostile 
feeling between the veterans of the greater fraternal 
contest. 

The literature we are striving to create, then, is to 
be truly national. We are already remote indeed 
from the closing words of Hosea Biglow's first 
utterance : — 

" Ef I'd my way I hed ruther 

We should go to work an' part . . . 
Man hed ough' to put asunder 

Them thet God has noways jined; 
An' I shouldn't gretly wonder 
Ef there's thousands o' my mind." 

If there be any Separatist or strong sectional feeling,, 
the cleavage is traceable, to-day, rather between West 
and East. Even our.gravest political and social prob- 
lems, the struggle between advocates of gold and 
silver, the tariff questions, the threatening combina- 
tions of labor and capital, are quite without relation 
to Mason and Dixon's line. 

The financial center is still Manhattan, which in- 
deed in these last years has almost taken the place 
of London as the heart of the world's wealth, " the 
power-house of the line." Two other unique con- 
ditions existing at the mouth of the Hudson must be 



294 



THE NATIONAL EPOCH 



Centraliza- 
tion of the 
book trade. 



Commercial 
spirit in 
literature. 



alluded to. It is the chief dumping ground for the 
unassimilated immigrants from all lands, and the 
home of nearly all our leading magazines, secular 
and religious weeklies, of the wealthiest newspapers, 
and of the book trade proper. Even the New Eng- 
land Magazine itself has just removed thither from 
Boston. 

Our reading public has increased enormously. 
The demand for light fiction, in particular, seems 
unlimited, and the supply is no less copious. Great 
clevernoss is shown in making attractive the many 
illustrated magazines, while the weekly and daily 
papers are reaching into the same field. The larger 
romance in book form also wins readers by the 
hundred thousand. Each year a popular hit, itself 
perhaps an accident, brings as its reward, if not 
wealth, a larger income than Hawthorne or Mrs. 
Stowe ever attained. 

Most of this output is not regarded by any critic, 
nor by the thrifty, keen-witted craftsmen who pro- 
duce it, as a serious contribution to permanent liter- 
ature. It is not usually foul or vicious, but neither 
is it instructive and elevating. It is simply manu- 
factured to sell. 

For the less successful, every sort of hack work 
stands as a besetting temptation. The roaring 
metropolis, the spirit of commercialism, the craving 
for sudden fame and for luxurious expenditure, un- 
doubtedly engulf many, who a half-century ago 
would have been maturing quietly in villages. Per- 
haps among them are lost Emersons and Hawthornes. 
The earlier conditions are swept away forever. The 
older American forces in our population are scat- 



Lazarus, 
1849-1887. 



GENERAL CONDITIONS 295 

tered, the commingling of new elements hardly 
begun. We are confronting strange and serious con- 
ditions. 

The immigrants, and even their children, contrib- 
ute relatively little to our best thought and expres- 
sion. The failure of our German element, in 
particular, to give itself utterance in the highest 
forms of art, is emphasized by such brilliant apparent 
exceptions as Schurz, von Hoist, and Francke, all of 
whom came to us in mature life and are German still. 
Emma Lazarus, the loyal Jewish poetess, and the rich Emma 
Keltic imagination of Miss Guiney, are real though 
not large exceptions. The career of Boyesen is still Louise 
more remarkable, since he acquired our language in ^^fey 
mature life and developed a pure but independent 186I. 
English style. As he remembered and described his Boyesen, 
Norwegian boyhood, so Dr. Charles Eastman, an 1848-1895, 
educated American physician, has recorded his own 
childhood and youth in a wigwam — for he is a full- 
blooded Sioux. A far more important record of a 
larger life is Booker Washington's " Up from Sla- 
very," which recalls Frederick Douglass's "My Bond- 
age and My Freedom." These are, however, all 
really minor figures. Our literature, much more 
distinctly than our national life, as a whole, is Anglo- 
Saxon still. 

Whatever the reasons, most philosophic observers 
feel that our full national union, and expansion, 
have as yet by no means brought with them adequate 
literary expression; that the successful authors of our 
day are indeed tenfold more numerous, but also 
individually less important, than those of the pre- 
vious generation ; and that poetry, in particular, 



296 



THE NATIONAL EPOCH 



has lost much of its influence on the national life. 
This may be an age of normal transition, 

" The rest of the wind, between the flaws that blow." 

Possibly this leveling tendency of prosperous de- 
mocracy is, after all, beneficent. We all read, and 
nearly all think we can write. The average intelli- 
gence at least, if not the average taste, is swiftly 
rising. Our time may be like Franklin's and Wash- 
ington's, a period of action so compact that the 
imagination cannot now come to her due. Finally, 
much that seems now so novel may be but a delu- 
sion of perspective. Possibly each age repeats, that 
" there were giants in those days," while we are 
pygmies in comparison ; that the men before us 
could lead lives more restful, less complex, and so 
completer and happier than our own ! At any 
rate, this final chapter must have the vagueness, 
doubtless too the distortion, of a photographic fore- 
ground, — though by no means its disproportionate 
share of space. Brevity is doubly necessary, because 
most of the men and women of note in our letters, 
younger than Lowell, are still living, and happily 
active in good works. 



Interna- 
tional ten- 
dencies of 
English 
literature. 



It is apparent that our country is destined to be 
the most populous and powerful in that natural 
alliance of English-speaking nations which, with 
minor differences but in the consciousness of close 
kinship, is coming to dominate the world. It is 
probable, therefore, that our national literature may 
yet be more and more closely associated with that of 
England and of her colonies in a form equally under- 



GENERAL CONDITIONS 297 

stood, and accepted as their own, by the greater part 
of mankind. Some signs of that far-off day may 
even be already pointed out. 

Franklin himself may be regarded as a homely 
cosmopolitan figure, the first prophet of that thrifty 
economic spirit which now dictates the combined or 
divergent action of nations in China, Africa, and in- 
deed all the world over. From the next generation 
we might mention Payne, who acted in England and John How- 
Scotland as much as at home, dyins: at last in Tunis. f5£^*.^^^' 

. . -> J Q 1792-1852. 

Of his sixty plays and operas only one strain of 
plaintive music is remembered, but that, surely, is 
equally familiar all the world over, wherever the 
Anglo-Saxon pitches his moving tent. " Home, 
Sweet Home " was originally a part of the opera 
"Clari, the Maid of Milan." Artist-authors like 
Allston have naturally migrated toward Italy. 

Irving, Story, Taylor, the younger Hawthorne, Julian 
Leland, might be thought of as more or less cosmo- J^J.^^^^^^ 
politan, but no one of them is a perfectly satisfactory 
illustration. Of course we do not refer to the elabo- 
rate transplanting of himself to a more congenial William 
social habitat, so successfully accomplished by the ^^^^o^^^ 
author of " Valentino " and " Sforza," nor to the easy 1848- ' 
crossing of our invisible northern frontier line by, ^^^^^ 
for instance, the welcome pilgrim from " The Forge Roberts, 
in the Forest." The long exile of William J. Still- ^^^ 
man, artist, essayist, agitator, archseologist, hardly James 
weakened his sturdy patriotism, but it did at least 1828^901. 
enable him to take a most independent objective 
view of his own youth, parents, and early environ- 
ment generally, in his remarkable autobiography. 
The memories, the stories, and the allegiance of 



298 



THE NATIONAL EPOCH 



Francis 
Eliza 
(Hodgson) 
Burnett, 



Francis 
Marion 
Crawford, 
1854- 



Mrs. Burnett are quite equally divided, and a certain 
international breadth of view is often felt in her 
work. Even in the popular favorite of childhood, 
"Lord Fauntleroy," the charms of life as a demo- 
crat in a democracy, and as a great lord of the 
manor, are perhaps fairly balanced. This writer's 
A.nglo- American quality, however, is chiefly an acci- 
dent of birth and involuntary migration. 

The younger Henry James appears to have with- 
drawn his roots almost wholly from his native soil, 
without fixing them firmly anywhere else. But his 
lifelong devotion to psychological analysis seems in 
danger of making his view of all living men and 
women more like to pathological microscopy than to 
any ordinary human sympathy. He is a man of 
genius, unique in his methods, and must be studied 
attentively. Much of his work seems to be, even 
more clearly than Browning's, a step over the border 
from literature into science. 

Far more easily enjoyed is the work of Mr. Craw- 
ford. His aim, indeed, is rarely much higher than 
a refined and superficial diversion of his reader. In 
his many romances he has hardly revealed any deep 
convictions as to character and life. But his subjects, 
treatment, sympathies, are broadly cosmopolitan. He 
is least natural, and least happy, in his American 
stories and characters. Indeed, we may suspect that 
he is really and fully " at home " only on Italian soil. 
It would be an interesting query, what spot of earth 
the phrase actually calls up to him, or even in what 
language he habitually dreams. In recent years Mr. 
Crawford has carried the graces of a romancer's style 
into historical works on Rome and Sicily. His 



GENERAL CONDITIONS 299 

" Via Crucis " is an ideal " historical novel " on a 
safe yet inspiring theme, the crusades. 

A still better example lies near our hand, and per- 
haps not quite out of reach. Mr. Kipling was born 
of English parents, as were many of our fellow-citi- 
zens, and much farther away than we, in almost every 
sense, from London. He has said more savage things 
about us than even Mr. Lowell. While the latter took 
the bitter mention of his home-country as " the Land 
of Broken Promise " out of his Agassiz poem, so the 
only notable utterance, doubtless, of Kipling's which 
he ever suppressed was the quatrain of his " Song of 
the English," intimating that our national bird is but 
a greedy and unclean vulture. 

But Mr. Kipling's half-American family are surely Rudyaid 
of " his own caste, race, and breed," as he puts it in ^o^^ ^^ ' 
the tale of Trejago's folly. But for the death of one Bombay, 
American kinsman, or the behavior of another, they ^oicott 
might still have their permanent home among us. In Baiestier, 
" Captains Courageous " he has set forth the speech, .< captains 
the way of life and thought, the living shapes of " mine Coura- 
own people," the Yankee fisher folk, more vividly, if ^^^^^' 
not more accurately, than any native poet or spinner 
of yarns has ever done. His patriotism is almost as 
much racial as national. He probably neither under- 
stands nor loves old England as fully as did Mr. 
Lowell. Wolcott Baiestier, had he lived, would per- 
haps have hastened and shared the evolution of an 
international, or even an Americanized, Kipling. 

Another man of English birth is of late years often 
mentioned in the same breath with Kipling. Mr. 
Thompson-Seton has aided materially in widening 
the range of our sympathies beyond the limits 



300 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

even of universal humanity. Many centuries before 
Coleridge's albatross was slain, moralists and poets 
had preached to us our kinship with all the ruder 
forms of organic life. The belief in transmigration 
of souls from tree or beast to man enforces such teach- 
ings. The werewolf, the satyr, the centaur, the 
hamadryad, the deliberately invented animal-fable 
that bears JEsop's name, had repeated the same lesson. 

Yet these two authors, both still young, are the first, 
if we except an occasional sketch like Charles Dudley 
Warner's "Hunting of the Deer," to enlist our sym- 
pathies fully on the side of the beast. They are 
quite independent of each other. The love and 
loyalty of Lobo to Bianca is offered to us as absolute 
realism, while the tale of Bagheera's and Kaa's friend- 
ship for Mowgli is frankly poetic and idealized. Of 
course both writers really ascribe human sentiments 
to creatures beyond the reach of our full comprehen- 
sion. Yet the artistic charm, freshness, and value of 
this new field can hardly be overstated. 

Such careers as these do not quite belong within the 
limits of any one national life. They are likely to 
grow more frequent and typical. Much more clearly 
cosmopolitan are the great historical essays of Irving, 
Prescott, Motley, and perhaps even of Parkman. We 
must, however, return to our better-defined theme. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

" Our Literature," Lowell, prose works, Vol. VI. " Sforza/* 
by W. W. Astor, Scribner. "Valentino," by W. W. Astor, 
Scribner. "Forge in the Forest," by Charles G. D. Roberts. 
William J. Stillman's "Autobiography," 2 vols., Houghton. 
" Captains Courageous," by Rudyard Kipling, Century. 



e 



CHAPTER II 
LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH 



THE more inspiring the future of our race and 
speech, the more imperative becomes our duty 
to record, to preserve, to understand, whatever is 
best in our past. This is especially true and pressing 
as to the old life of the South. While the North and 
West suffered terrible loss, and were profoundly 
modified, through the Civil War, the cataclysm was 
for the South all but destructive. That vanished 
phase of our civilization was the most picturesque, 
indeed the most retarded and mediaeval, form of 
Anglo-Saxon life then existing. The contrasts and 
interrelations between Black and White were per- 
haps as effective there as in India, though no Kip- 
ling, but only a hostile Nemesis in the person of Mrs. 
Stowe, arose to give them adequate artistic expression. 
Indeed, the South, before the war, vaguely conscious 
of hostile criticism from all sides, shrank even from 
friendly revelation or discussion of its real social con- 
ditions. Mrs. Eastman's "Aunt Phillis's Cabin, or Mary 
Southern Life as It Is," was a natural though inef- (He^^er- 

' ^ ° son) 

f ective retort under extreme provocation, but probably Eastman, 
never had much sale in the Southern states. Even 
to-day, such an author as Page or Harris reaches, 
through Yankee publishers, an audience nine-tenths 
of whom are alien to the writer's own traditions. 
Hence we were in imminent danger of losing the 
301 



1818- 



302 



THE NATIONAL EPOCH 



Samuel 

Adams 

Drake, 

183^ 

Augustus 

Baldwin 

Longstreet, 

1790-1870. 

Joseph G. 

Baldwin, 

1811-1864. 



Theodore 

O'Hara, 

1820-1867. 



Philip 

Pendleton 

Cooke, 

1816-1850. 

Richard 

Henry 

Wilde, 

1789-1847. 

Edward 

Coate 

Pinkney, 

1802-1828. 

Stephen 

Collins 

Foster, 

1826-1864. 



materials for a full understanding of that vanished life. 
Much that ought even now to be promptly done 
requires capacity less rare than the poet's or ro- 
mancer's. Indeed, for the future student, a faithful 
collection like Drake's " New England Legends and 
Folklore " may be more useful than the most con- 
scientious studies of local detail in the form of fiction, 
like Mrs. Austin's " Standish of Standish." - A few 
truthful if crude sketches, like Judge Longstreet's 
" Georgia Scenes " or Baldwin's " Flush Times in 
Alabama and Mississippi," antedate the war. 

The purely literary output of the Southern states 
has not been large, and the qualit}^ even of the best 
work is rather uneven. Thus O'Hara's ringing 
stanzas, called "The Bivouac of the Dead," were 
actually composed over a handful of gallant but 
unknown Kentuckians, who fell in a cause not now 
generally defended as worthy, at Buena Vista. Some 
even of these verses deserve only oblivion. But some, 
again, have been inscribed on soldiers' monuments 
the world around, and may well be intoned, as the 
dirge of martial heroes, till war shall be known no 
more. In other cases even a single airy rhyme like 
Cooke's " Florence Vane," or Wilde's " My Life is 
like a Summer Rose," will hardly survive much 
longer. Pinkney's name and songs are perhaps 
somewhat less strange to our ears. Most remark- 
able is it that Stephen C. Foster, who at nineteen 
wrote " Old Folks at Home," and later in life com- 
posed " Suwanee River," " Old Kentucky Home," etc., 
was born in Pennsylvania and lived in New York 
City ; where, also, originated, still earlier, the name 
and refrain of "Dixie." On the other hand it must 



LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH 303 

not be forgotten that we owe our chief national song, 
"The Star- Spangled Banner," to Francis Key of Francis 
Maryland. ^°^,^y' 

The Civil War produced no Southern war chant of 
such inspiring power as Mrs. Howe's " Battle Hymn 
of the Republic," while defeat was too crushing, and 
long too bitter, to make possible any utterance fairly 
responsive to Francis M. Finch's 

" Love and tears for the Blue, 
Tears and love for the Gray.'* 

On the other hand, no Northern poetry could have 

the strength of that despairing regret long felt, and 

uttered, by the vanquished. We may even be glad 

that Will Thompson fought on the losing side at Will Henry 

Gettysburg, since he could not else have iS^^^°"' 

" heard across the tempest loud 
The death cry of a nation lost ! " 

(Stedman's " Anthology," pp. 508-509.) 

Especially identified with the lost cause are the 
lyrics of Father Ryan, notably " The Sword of Lee " 
and "The Conquered Banner." We can all repeat 

now : — 

"Furl that banner softly, slowly! 
Treat it gently — it is holy, 
For it droops above the dead." 

The best-known group of Southern poets of the war 
period is centered about a veteran as grizzled, pictur- 
esque, and fearless as the Mark Twain of to-day. 
^ William Gilmore Simms, a large, generous, and lov- William 
able man, made a lifelong but unsuccessful attempt ^^^^^^g^^ 
to earn a subsistence from his pen. In his best days 1806-1870. 
his readers were chiefly in the North. Indeed, 



304 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

though so heartily devoted to his native Charles- 
ton, it was on his annual visits in Manhattan 
that he gained courage and won a market for his 
work, while his attempts to create Southern peri- 
odicals were all foredoomed to costly failure. Thus 
his great Indian romance, " Yemassee," and his Revolu- 
tionary tale, " The Partisan," were published, both in 
1835, each in two volumes, in New York. Even so, 
the goodly estate of Woodlands, halfway from 
Charleston to Augusta, where his well-beloved anti- 
slavery guest, William Cullen Bryant, later saw 
Simms's negro slaves living in prosperous content, 
was acquired, still in the same year, not through litera- 
ture at all, but by marriage. The story how Simms, 
bereft of income, several children, and wife, during 
the Civil War, finally saw his home and library of 
ten thousand books go up in fire during Sherman's 
march, is really tragic. Disheartened at last, he yet 
toiled steadily on with pen and voice to the very 
end. 

Simms was imperfectly educated, never acquired 
the habit of revision, and was rarely allowed time to 
prepare even his materials and plots. His strong, 
crude, swift style has none of the finer graces neces- 
sary for poetry. His imagination, however, is at 
times almost Titanic. The great scenes in " Yemassee," 
especially, suffice to set him far above any romancer 
of his type save, perhaps. Cooper. In such passages 
his Indians appeal to us with resistless power, how- 
ever unreal they may be. But even in that book 
there are wearisome and useless characters, weak, 
dragging scenes, and others full of fruitless horrors. 
Reticence, artistic restraint, polish, were meaningless 



Timrod, 
1829-1867. 



LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH 305 

words to Simms. Yet his character and work are 
both important for all thoughtful Americans. 

In the later fifties a little social and literary club 
used to meet in Charleston, perhaps chiefly to hear 
its president, Simms, discourse largely on letters and 
all other topics. Among the members were Profes- Basil 
sor Gildersleeve, — then fresh from his German uni- GiWe-^'^ 
versity, and now our most widely known classical sleeve, i83i- 
scholar, — Henry Timrod, and Paul Hayne. Each Timrod, 
of these three lost, like their leader, all save hope, 1792-1838. 
in the Civil War. Timrod was the son of an intelli- Henry- 
gent Charleston mechanic, a bookbinder, who had 
himself a gift for verse, best employed in a ringing 
protest against Nullification in 1833, a poem which 
seems surely to be from Whittier's inkstand : — 

" Sons of the Union, rise ! 
Stand ye not recreant by." 

In the son the refinement, the intense idealism, 
the sensitive taste, of the poet were as pre- 
dominant as they were wanting in Simms. 
Escaping from the hated practice of law, he found 
no professorship like Lowell, but a humble career as 
a private tutor. It is pleasant to recall that Ticknor 
and Fields published his few verses in 1860. In 
1864 he became the happy editor of a paper in 
Columbia, a husband, and a father. Next year his 
son died, Columbia was destroyed by Sherman's 
arm}^, Timrod was reduced to utter poverty, if not 
to absolute starvation. 

The little volume of three to four thousand verses, 
published with a loving memoir by Hayne, in 1873, 
includes some of our purest lyric utterances. Among 



306 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

the longer poems, " The Cotton Boll," with its true 
local color, is of far more value than the ambitious 
and early " Vision of Poesy," unless we can read 
out of the latter the singer's own inner story. But, 
especially, a fierce word now and then hurled at our- 
selves, like '' ruffian foe," " the Goth," ^' the Hun," 
should nowise mar our full admiration for the war 
poetry of Timrod. He would have been a generous 
victor, though it seems a bolder prophetic creation of 
fancy than Macaulay's famous New Zealander, sketch- 
ing the ruins of St. Paul, when he surely foresees 

that 

" the Goth shall cling 
To his own blasted altar stones, and crave 
Mercy ; and we shall grant it, and dictate 
The lenient future of his fate 

There, where some rotting ships and crumbling quays 
Shall one day mark the Port which ruled the Western seas." 

Such feeling is already historic only, but " Spring," 
and especially "Christmas," with its refrain of 
" Peace, Peace," makes lasting appeal to all. 

Hayne cheerfully accepts, for his dead friend, 
Richard H. Stoddard's judgment that Timrod was 
the ablest poet the South had produced. Though of 
the highest social rank, nephew and foster-son of that 
Robert Y. Hayne who faced Webster in the Senate, 
he shared his friend's utter poverty when the war 
ended. His sturdier strength enabled him to turn 
his back on the scene of havoc and later of negro 
misgovernment, and make a happy home for many 
years in a rude cabin among the pine barrens of 
Georgia. He has left ten times as much verse as 
Timrod, not all valuable, nor even natural and strong. 



LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH 307 

But in him too there is much real poetry, much true 
local color. His " Forgotten ! " remembers with 
noble pride the failure of 

" Men who strove like gods." 

We must recognize the same large sincerity with 
which Lowell exalts Lincoln, in the lines of Hayue 
on Stonewall Jackson : — 

" soul 1 that on our time 
Wrought, in the calm magnificence of power, 
To ends so noble." 

Lanier, the most richly gifted man of the group, Sidney 
was perhaps also one of the costly sacrifices of the {^^YssL 
war, like Timrod, since he contracted at Petersburg 
in 1863 the disease against which he fought for eigh- 
teen years. From childhood he was devoted to 
music. His two kindred passions were both cruelly 
starved in the utter poverty that befell the South 
after the war. The pathetic story of his life cannot 
be coherently told in brief space. 

In Baltimore, after long years, he found opportu- 
nity for thorough study of Anglo-Saxon and English 
poetry, which he required as part of his large prep- 
aration. His " Science of English Verse," 1880, 
includes a most technical and ingenious study of 
rhythm, tone-color of vowels and consonants, and 
kindred problems. He believed in a closer union of 
pure music and poetic utterance than has ever been 
achieved, perhaps closer than is attainable by the ar- 
tist, or intelligible to other men. The ridicule that be- 
fell his "Centennial Cantata," however, was certainly 
unfair, because the words, though published alone, 
were a mere libretto, intended to be heard only as 



308 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

sung to Dudley Buck's music. This opportunity for 
distinction in 1876 came to Lanier through the gener- 
ous friendship of Bayard Taylor, and first made him 
widely known. But he had hardly begun to use in 
poetry the matured results of his scientific studies, 
when the struggle to live and breathe at all became 
hopeless. No life in our annals gives so profound an 
impression of rare genius never adequately revealed. 

There is relatively little, even in Lanier's small 
volume of verse, which can be of general interest. 
Perhaps such music as that of " Chattahoochee," com- 
pared with Tennyson's brook, will indicate that 
Lanier, had he lived, might have rivaled Swinburne 
in the harmonic and rhythmic effects of verse. 
" The Marshes of Glynn," we are told, can never be 
forgotten by a reader who knows also the actual 
sounds and lights of a Southern swamp. " How 
Love sought for Hell" is probably the clearest 
utterance of his lofty ethical convictions. He felt 
that he had, waiting for utterance, the noble truths 
which can alone justify the most melodious forms. 
Of that confidence he has perhaps left us less ade- 
quate justification in his verses than in prose, which 
includes some flashing critical analyses of William 
Morris, Swinburne, Whitman, and others. 

It is no wonder that the most intensely and purely 
poetic voice from the Southland, in our own days, 
should cry to Lanier : — 

John " Ere Time's horizon-line was set, 

Banister Somewhere in space our spirits met." 

Tabb, 1845- 

Any soul to whom the ecstasy of lyric passion has 
ever come might well dream that he had met, or hope 



LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH 309 

yet to meet, in "wind-swept space," the dauntless, 
spotless soul of the soldier, musician, poet, and true 
lover, Sidney Lanier. 

A most remarkable change of sectional allegiance 
is seen in the career of Albert Pike. Born in Bos- Albert Pike, 
ton and educated at Harvard, he early became, ^^^^^^^i- 
through explorations, then through final choice, 
identified with the Southwest. His proslavery and 
anti- Yankee feelings are expressed in stirring verse 
and earnest prose. He not only served against Mex- 
ico in 1847, but later led a troop of Indians under 
the Confederate flag. His early environment is a 
curious gloss upon his song : — 

" For Dixie's land we take our stand, 
And live or die for Dixie 1 " 

In his tenderer and more' dreamy moods he is a true 
poet. Mr. Stedman, who admires him, quotes, in the 
"Anthology," his "To the Mockingbird." Natu- 
rally, such a poem suffers by the comparison with the 
immortal "Nightingale" of Keats. Yet the Occiden- 
tal bird's note is no mere echo, but a genuine and 
truly poetic utterance. 

Except the throbbing, yet finished quatrains and 
sonnets of Father Tabb, which remind us of Landor's 
best cameos in verse, there is little in our latest poetry 
to be assigned to the South. The most popular 
singer to-day is Frank Stanton. A glance into Sted- Frank 
man's " Anthology " will discover sweet utterances g?^7 
of his in at least three tones : national patriotism in 1857- 
" One Country," wedded love in " A Little Way " — paui 
and a "Plantation Ditty." Paul Dunbar, the negro Laurence 
poet, was born, long after the war, in Ohio. I872- 



310 



THE NATIONAL EPOCH 



Richard 
Malcolm 
Johnston, 
1822-1898. 



John Esten 

Cooke, 

1830-1886. 

Joel 

Chandler 

Harris, 

1848- 



While New England had to wait two centuries 
before the grim earlier chapters of her story, par- 
ticularly the relations of the Puritans with the 
Indians, the Quakers, and their own brethren ac- 
cused of witchcraft, could receive artistic treatment, 
the terrible break in the Southern civilization makes 
a prompter filial action necessary, as to the remoter 
or the recent past. 

Perhaps it was the excellent Yankee school seventy 
years ago in Powelton, Georgia, that lifted Richard 
Johnston from the contented ignorance of that plan- 
tation life which his childhood shared, and which in 
later years he has so delightfully recalled. Readers 
of St, Nicholas need no introduction to his Little Ike 
Templin, while Mr. Billy Downs and his set give 
delight, and food for serious thought also, to riper 
students of sociology. Though a professor of belles 
lettres in Maryland State University by 1851, Colonel 
Johnston really began his literary career as late as 
Dr. Holmes. He is perhaps the happiest example of 
those men, already mature in 1861, who not merely 
outlived, like Hayne, but outgrew, the immediate in- 
fluence of the war, and fully accepted their own place 
in a new order. He was the patriarch amid a goodly 
group. Few, indeed, of our authors have done more 
valuable work in our own time than this popular 
Southern "school." Their artistic realism has com- 
pletely supplanted the artificial and stilted romance 
best exemplified in Cooke's "Virginia Comedians." 

Joel Chandler Harris will be remembered best for 
his Uncle Remus, who, though a happy invention, 
is typically real and important. The harmless wit, 
the roguishness, the deft pathetic touches, the fre- 



LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH 311 

quent gleam of poetic beauty or symbolic meaning, 
in the tales of Bre'r Rabbit and his friends or foes, 
are of course largely Mr. Harris's own creation, 
though the folklore and tradition are genuine at the 
core, and all the elements blend in the delicious 
result. All such masterly work has its share in that 
loyal and effective artistic defense of the old regime 
which is so happily in progress. Mr. Harris has a 
much larger career than that of the humorist alone. 
His work occasionally crosses the field of Mr. Page's 
books. He has even written a history : " Georgia, 
from the Invasion of De Soto to Present Times." 

While Mr. Harris was and is a Georgian, Mr. Page Thomas 
was born in Virginia. Too young to serve even in paie°^i853. 
the last exhaustive draught of boys and graybeards 
in defense of the South, he has shown truthfully in 
his " Little Confederates " how intense was the feeling 
of the women, and of the children hardly less. The 
softening effect of time is felt in most of Mr. Page's 
work. His most sustained novel, however, "Red 
Rock," is, even in its subtitle, a serious picture of 
reconstruction. It shows the stanchest attachment 
to the section of his birth, and the background, at 
least, is decidedly gray still, rather than blue. Some 
of Mr. Page's short stories, as "Two Prisoners," 
show mastery of artistic and pathetic effects quite 
apart from his original Southern field. 

James Lane Allen is a popular member of the same James Laue 
general group, though Kentucky is a border state, 
which did not as a whole share in great revolt. 
His most recent work shows an intrusion of theol- 
ogy, of psychological problems generally, which may 
endanger his artistic career. 



312 



THE NATIONAL EPOCH 



Ruth 
McEnery 
Stuart, 
1856- 



George 
Washington 
Cable, 
1844- 



Mary 

Noailles 

Murfree 

(" Charles 

Egbert 

Craddock"), 

1850- 



Marion J. 
(Evans) 
Wilson, 
1835- 

Margaret 
(Junkin) 
Preston, 
1825-1897. 



Mrs. Stuart barely shares the personal memories 
of the war time, and there are no deep scars from it 
upon her life or work. Indeed, she might at times 
seem to count among our purely humorous writers, 
though the pathos almost always comes in before 
her merry tale is done, and her sense of form and 
proportion is true and line. Louisiana and Arkan- 
sas are her home fields, and her free Keltic imagina- 
tion illuminates them both. 

Mr. Cable has reproduced in nearly all his genial 
books the life and dialect of the Louisiana Creoles. 
This is a subject apart, though not wholly remote, 
from the general life in the land of cotton and rice. 
His accuracy has been rather sharply questioned by 
some Southern critics, but his art certainly makes 
effective appeal to our alien ears. 

Much more austerely aloof from all men stand the 
mountaineers of Tennessee. Even aided by Miss 
Murfree's goodly shelf of books, with their sturdy 
masculine figures, their somewhat monotonous dialect 
and background, we do not "fully overcome that sense 
of extreme remoteness, which is, indeed, without 
doubt, a part of the artist's intention. There is a 
large creative force, a poetic effect of atmosphere, in 
these books, which may yet give them a revival of 
popularity and a permanent value. 

The list of Southern authors is by no means 
exhausted. Marion Evans was once a most popular 
story-writer, and "St. Elmo" is still called for. 
Mrs. Preston, a refined novelist, would have wished 
to be counted with the section that gave her birth. 
F. H. Smith's wide wanderings with palette and pen 
might relegate him to the cosmopolitans, but his 



LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH 313 

Colonel Carter is as unforgettable as any Southern Francis 
gentleman of the old school. The latest popular ^^f^^'"'^'' 
favorite, Miss Johnston, has time before her to write 183&- 
a whole cycle of romances at her present speed. Her jXi^ton 
English style is formed on excellent models. Her 1870- 
taste for horrors is not so pronounced as Simms's. 
But her imagination is even more riotous, and has 
little regard as yet for the humble realities of early 
Virginian life, or for the limits beyond which even a 
novel of action may not drag the breathless reader, 
or "the lady's silken gown." It was a masculine 
poet — Pindar — to whom a preceptress gave the 
warning, " Sow by the handful, not from the sack." 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

" Life of William Gilmore Simms," by W. P. Trent, Houghton, 
in " American Men of Letters." Timrod's poems, with memoir, 
Houghton. Hayne's poems, Lothrop. Lanier's music and 
poems, letters, " The English Novel," " Science of English 
Verse," Scribner. Poems of J. B. Tabb, Small. Joel Chandler 
Harris's books are published by Houghton, Scribner, Century, 
and Appleton. Thomas Nelson Page's works, Scribner. James 
Lane Allen's publisher is Macmillan. Ruth McEnery Stuart's 
stories. Harper, Century, Lippincott. Cable's works, by Scribner. 
Miss Murfree (" Craddock "), Houghton, Harper, Macmillan. 

See in general, William M. Baskervill's "Southern Writers," 

Manly's " Southern Literature," and T. N. Page's " The Old 
South." I 



CHAPTER III 



LATER NEW ENGLAND 



THE living patriarchs of New England letters, like 
Dr. Hale and Colonel Higginson, may perhaps 
be considered as the slow-passing rear guard of the 
Emersonian phalanx. Mr. Hale's " Man without a 
Country " was the most popular short story of our 
war epoch, in fact, one of the most famous and 
effective American stories ever written. His ac- 
tivity ever since, as indeed long before, has been 
primarily that of the preacher and organizer of 
social reforms. His historical work, though severely 
criticised for inaccuracy, is always readable, and, like 
much of his verse and fiction, inspiringly patriotic in 
tone. His " New England Boyhood " has already an 
historic, almost an antiquarian, value. 

Colonel Higginson's life seems yet longer, for its 
activity began very early. Near kinsman of the 
Channings, vitally influenced by Margaret Fuller, 
whom he has loyally repaid, he was just in time 
to have his boyish verse wisely declined, as he 
assures us, by the elder Dial. His parsonage in 
Worcester, Massachusetts, was long a station on 
the " Underground Railway," i.e. a harboring place 
for fugitive slaves. He was wounded, and impris- 
oned, as the leader in an attempt to rescue a recap- 
tured bondsman from the very stronghold of law and 
government in his own state. He was deep in John 

314 



LATER NEW ENGLAND 315 

Brown's secrets, and risked his life in an unsuccessful 
second raid, vainly essayed to rescue some of Brown's 
comrades from their later death on the gallows. When 
men with negro blood were permitted to enlist in 
regiments under white officers, for the Civil War, 
the " young curate from Worcester " came naturally 
to the front. His "Army Life in a Black Regiment " 
is one of the most instructive and humane chapters 
in the grim tale of war. 

Since then his career has been essentially in litera- 
ture, though anything but that of a cloistered scholar. 
He is a lifelong champion of woman suffrage, a fear- 
less advocate of pure politics, of the poor man's 
rights, of the golden rule. His literary touch, 
especially as an essayist, is peculiarly graceful, sen- 
sitive and light. His tact almost hides his audacity. 
Radical in nearly all else, he is one of our few 
effective advocates and exemplars of classical and 
humanistic culture. While his enjoyment of fight- 
ing is as undeniable as Whittier's, his optimism is 
almost as unfailing as Emerson's. The " Cheerful 
Yesterdays " of such a man are a happy chapter of 
our literary chronicles, and emphasize the closest 
relations of letters and life. 

In Arlington, a beautiful suburb of Boston, still 
lives the favorite of our boyhood, J. T. Trowbridge, John 
author of such popular tales as " Cudjo's Cave " and xXbridge, 
" Coupon Bonds," written in war time, and of many a I827- 
good story since. His " Vagabonds," and " Darius 
Greene," are only the best known of many poems, 
original in melody and character. Horace 

An old favorite of children, too, especially for his g^u^^er 
books of travel, was H. E. Scudder, who has also been I83s-i902. 



316 



THE NATIONAL EPOCH 



Charles 
Eliot 
Norton, 
1827- 



Francis 
James 
Child, 
1825-1896. 



Julia Ward 
Howe, 1819- 



Adeline 

Button 

Train 

Whitney, 

1824- 



a most devoted and modest editor of our chief New 
England authors. His life of Lowell is the latest and 
largest of many similiar studies. He was the most 
useful and industrious of bookmen. His death is one 
of the latest recorded in these pages, and is deeply 
felt by many younger writers, whose generous mentor 
he has been so long. 

The accepted living representative of culture and 
general scholarship in literature is Professor Norton, 
the surviving friend of all the three Smith profes- 
sors, Ticknor, Longfellow, and Lowell, translator of 
Dante, author of "Church Building in the Middle 
Ages," highly useful as editor of his friends' letters 
and speeches, the sympathetic father confessor of 
countless younger authors or scholars. As professor 
of the history of art, he has taught above all else 
the inseparable relation between the fine arts and the 
moral life of community or individual. It is the 
lesson which our race most needs. A heavy recent 
loss from the same circle was the death of the 
well-beloved Professor Child, editor of the British 
poets, whose unwearied search saved from oblivion 
many of the English ballads included in his exhaust- 
ive and monumental edition. 

Mrs. Howe is the most venerable and the most 
illustrious of literary women in Boston. Her long 
career as philanthropist, reformer, and likewise as 
poet, are worthy of her " Battle Hymn," the supreme 
utterance of the war. 

A venerable survivor, also, is Mrs. Whitney of 
Milton, another suburb of Boston. Her direct influ- 
ence with girls is doubtless waning already, like Miss 
Edgeworth's, Mrs. Sigourney's, or Miss Sedgwick's 



LATER NEW ENGLAND 317 

before her. She is indeed avowedly rather a moralist 
than an imaginative writer, and each generation usu- 
ally produces its own preachers and critics of life, as 
of literature, neglecting even the best of other days. 
Yet there is much wit, as well as womanly wisdom, 
in her goodly row of volumes. 

The widow of J. T. Fields, so long the "Maecenas" James 
among publishers, has made valuable supplements to I?^^?** 
his intimate "Yesterdays with Authors," and has I8I6-I88I. 
written the completed life of Mrs. Stowe. She has ^Adlms) 
a modest place also among writers of verse. Fields, 1834- 

These men and women are nearly all past seventy, 
Mrs. Howe even more than eighty. When we seek for 
their successors we realize how strong is the outward 
current. 

Mr. Aldrich appears already to belong to a former Thomas 
literary generation, and indeed his pen seems to have ^idrich 
gathered rust for some years past. The Portsmouth 1837- 
career of the "Bad Boy" is familiar to all young 
readers. As editor of the Atlantic his figure became 
as familiar to Bostonians as Phillips Brooks's gigantic 
frame, or the gaunt shape of E. E. Hale. Mr. Aldrich 
recalls a previous incarnation on the banks of old 
Nile ; and indeed, so far as pure and serious art, with 
a dash of dreamy idealism still, may drift from the 
austerer tradition of Puritanism, he has departed. 
He never preached, in any sense. His workmanship 
is exquisite, but never painfully so. His lyric verse 
is tender, yet touched with the light-hearted humor 
which colors his whole view of life. His best short 
stories have a large vein of mischief and mystification. 
His longer novels perhaps lack somewhat the justifi- 
cation of broad view or large ethical purpose, but all 



318 



THE NATIONAL EPOCH 



Barrett 

WendeU, 

1855- 

Nathaniel 

Southgate 

Shaler, 

1841- 



Frank 

Bolles, 

185&-1894. 

John 

Burroughs, 

1837- 

" Olive 

Thorne " 

Miller, 

1831- 

Bradford 

Torrey, 

1843- 

William 

Ellery 

Channing, 

1818-1901. 

Franklin 

Benjamin 

Sanborn, 

1831- 

Julian 

Hawthorne, 

1846- 



the too little that he writes is enjoyed. His firm, 
light touch is on whatever he does. It would be 
far easier to apply the word indolent to him than 
to Lowell. He would first defiantly question our 
right to work him against his will, then more soberly 
assure us that nothing can be done aright save when 
the spirit moves. But the spirit is Ariel. 

An essayist and critic like Professor Wendell 
seems to stand quite alone, even in Cambridge. Pro- 
fessor Shaler is perhaps as much a man of letters 
as of science, while his " United States of America " 
combines the two in useful fashion, connecting ge- 
ology with the present life of our people. Both 
Harvard and literature suffered in the premature 
death of Frank Bolles. Among all the happy disci- 
ples of Thoreau, interpreters of outdoor life through 
the microscope and telescope, like John Burroughs, 
Mrs. Miller, Bradford Torrey, he, the youngest, had 
the most unique literary or personal quality, perhaps 
the most poetic nature. He seems still Chocorua's 
quiet tenant-in-common with squirrels and birds. 

In Concord the sturdily willful poet, Channing, 
survived into the twentieth century, and the yet more 
sturdy old Abolitionist, Frank Sanborn, still gives 
and takes the heaviest blows with quiet enjoyment. 
Julian Hawthorne, with much of his father's gloomy 
imagination, much less than his father's artistic con- 
trol and reticence, has written vivid but often crude 
romances, with little ethical significance. He is not 
at home in Puritanic Concord, certainly, hardly in 
America at all. 

There are a number of graceful and thoughtful 
writers pf prose in the Wellesley faculty: Miss 



LATER NEW ENGLAND 319 

Scudder and Miss Bates, of the English department, vida 
are perhaps the most widely known. Miss Bates's ?^^J^° 
volume on American literature is full of just such isei- 
vivid local color and antiquarian lore as Alice Morse Le^e^^ter 
Earle's delightful books. Miss Scudder's " Introduc- 1859- 
tion" is the best-proportioned, most philosophic, and 
alluring work in brief compass upon English litera- 
ture known to the present writer. 

In Boston itself the most familiar younger figure 
is probably Judge Grant. His " Opinions and Reflec- Robert 
tions" — of a social leader in the city of culture— ^^a»^' ^^52- 
suffer a bit from the inevitable comparison with the 
breakfast-table talk by an older critic of life. His 
stories have ranged from popular boys' books to the 
merciless and even cynical if not despairing realism of 
his "Unleavened Bread," whose heroine is the sever- 
est criticism of American womanhood known to us. 
In prose and occasional verse Mr. Grant is witty, 
keen, reflective, instructive. 

Boyle O'Reilly is still missed, though he remained John Boyle 
to the end, like his cousin "Miles," an Irishman, f^^Jj) 
a Bohemian, a cosmopolitan good fellow. His " Yarn Charles G. 
of the Amber Whale " he picked up on the New ^2^^\^8 
Bedford vessel that saved him from the life of a 
Fenian convict. 

Miss Wilkins has lived in Randolph, not many Mary 
miles away, while Miss Jewett divides her year be- ^^^^^g 
tween Boston and her home in South Berwick, 1862- 
Maine. Both are widely known for their exact jg^^^t ^°^ 
and interesting studies of the humbler phases in New 1849- > 
England rural life. Miss Wilkins is usually a some- 
what depressing realist. Miss Jewett's landscape 
'^as a happier colorinsj ; she is more poetic^ even 



320 



THE XATIOXAL EPOCH 



Tomantic, in spirit, and her characters have a richer 
endowment of Yankee humor. Her range is also 
somewhat wider, and she has even written one care- 
ful historical monograph, "The Story of the Nor- 
mans." Miss Brown is perhaps already to be set in 
the same group. 

Historians, like Schouler, Rhodes, John T. Morse, 
are mentioned elsewhere. Antiquarians, specialists, 
men eminent in curious research, are not rare in Bos- 
ton, and are abundant in Cambridge. President 
Eliot has not only been the reorganizer of the uni- 
versity, the foremost reformer in American education 
generally, but has defended his theses with persuasive 
voice and vigorous pen for thirty years and more. 
All this, however, is rather scientific scholarship 
than literature as a fine art. Perhaps the latter no 
longer has a local habitation an)rwhere. Certainly 
the Boston or Cambridge of a half-century ago is a 
memory only. Pilgrimages are made thither, just as 
to Concord or even to Plymouth, to visit the homes, 
the haunts, and the graves of the departed. 

Mrs. Howe's daughter, Mrs. Richards, now living 
in Gardiner, Maine, has used her inherited gift as a 
writer of exquisite child stories. " Captain Janu- 
ary " is a masterpiece. The poetry of the sea and 
shore by Mrs. Thaxter will always be associated with 
the Isle of Shoals. Mrs. Spofford, long an Atlan- 
tic essayist, author of strong and imaginative ro- 
mances, still lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts. 
Her recent volume of poems, " In Titian's Garden," 
reveals, even by its title, her love of rich and roman- 
tic coloring. 

Mrs. Ward, an intense religious nature, with an 



Later xew exglaxd 321 

audacious vividness of imagination, is associated Elizabeth 
with Andover, but now abides with her husband in ^^^^^^ 
Newton, Massachusetts. In temperament she seems Ward, 
a survival of the most strenuous Puritanism, though ^ 
she adds to it a wide culture and much artistic power. 
Her ''Come Forth," in which Mr. Ward collaborated, 
makes Lazarus the center of a romantic love story. 
The danger in such patching of old cloth of gold 
with new calico is intimated elsewhere in alluding 
to "Ben Hur." Mrs. Ward's poetry is perhaps the 
clearest expression of her ardent, confident, half- 
mystical genius. 

In Rhode Island was born H. H. Brownell, whose Henry 
war lyrics are still favorites. " The Bay Fight " and Broken 
" The River Fight " are chapters from his own expe- 1820-1872. 
rience. Charles T. Brooks, for nearly forty years a Charles 
Unitarian preacher in Newport, Rhode Island, was Brooks^ 
best known for his translations. His version of 1813-1883. 
" Faust" is overshadowed, perhaps unduly, by Bayard 
Taylor's skillful rendering. 

By right of birth, at least, the little state of Roger 
Williams may lay claim to a much more famous man. 
G. W. Curtis received at Brook Farm, and later at George 
Concord, the best part of his boyish education. His curtis"^ 
" Nile Notes " (1851) and "Howadji in Syria " (1852) I83i-i892. 
were so fresh and vivid in coloring as to draw some 
amusing criticism on "moral grounds." Returning 
from his travels, Curtis plunged into the thick of 
the antislavery agitation ; but in the last decade 
before the war that no longer meant isolation. Some- 
thing of mob violence he was still in time to suffer. 
His remarkable powers as a public speaker were in 
constant demand, and he was one of the last and 



322 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

greatest recruits in the true old guard of " Lyceum 
lecturers." No voice was so clear and hopeful a 
trumpet call to our own dreamful youthtime. A 
place might well be claimed for him, too, among our 
greatest public orators. In state and national con- 
ventions his organlike voice was known, and heark- 
ened unto perforce. 

Curtis wrote a few pleasant verses, but made 
no claim to be a poet. He published several society 
novels, now nearly forgotten, save the tender personal 
sentiment and faded local color of "Prue and I." 
From his Easy Chair in Harper^ b Magazine^ for 
thirty-five years, he preached social and political 
righteousness, with a genial grace, a sparkle of wit, 
and a wide-ranging culture, which raise many of 
these utterances almost to the level of permanent 
literature. 

Mr. Curtis did not, to any such extent as Mr. 
Bryant, repine at destiny for making him after all 
rather a journalist than an author. His political 
services, especially as the editor of Harper s Weekly 
during and after the war, can hardly be over- 
estimated. Indeed, this life is probably the best 
example we could cite, for a happy and fruitful effect 
from that resistless maelstrom current toward Man- 
hattan already often mentioned. The leading advo- 
cate of reform in our civil service, a fearless idealist 
in politics, he was often a target of vulgar ridicule 
and of fierce criticism. But he is now generally 
accepted as the all but faultless type of the scholarly, 
public-spirited, independent author-citizen. 

Arthur Hardy, a Dartmouth professor of mathe- 
matics, excited high hopes long ago by his beautiful 



LATER NEW ENGLAND 323 

" Passe Rose," a swift-moving romance of Charle- 
magne's time. Recently he has published a small 
volume of intimately personal verse. As minister 
to Persia, and to Greece, he has now been long absent, 
and all but silent. 

The best-known man of letters in New Haven, Mr. Donald 
Mitchell, has reached his eightieth year. He is still ^ucheii 
best known for his youthful "Dream Life" and 1822- 
" Reveries of a Bachelor." His long and cheerful 
career in literature is pleasantly crowned by his 
reminiscences of " American Lands and Letters." 

By his great work on Chaucer, and his excellent 
life of Cooper, Professor Lounsbury has won a very Thomas 
high position among scholarly essayists. President ^^gbur^ 
Hadley, Professor Perrin, and other Yale men, are 1838- 
able writers and speakers. Yale, however, has never 
had a chair at all answering to the Smith professor- 
ship at Harvard. The largest name among her 
recent dead, William D. Whitney, belongs to scholar- 
ship rather than to literature. 

The heaviest loss suffered by Hartford since the 
departure of Mrs. Stowe is the death of Mr. Warner. Charles 
In him we find still the serious foundation of the ^^rner 
Puritan nature ; but of asceticism, bigotry, intoler- 1829-1900. 
ance, there is no trace. The pure humor, indicative 
of a serene yet sensitive nature plays lightly over 
every page he wrote. 

The story of his happy childhood in the country 
he has told us in " Being a Boy." He had a varied 
early manhood, as civil engineer on the Western 
frontier, practicing law in Chicago, then as editor in 
Hartford. He made his entry into literature late, 
.atnd^ as it were, accidentally, being persuaded by popu- 



324 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

lar applause to make a book out of sketches which 
he had at first modestly contributed to his paper, the 
Courant. The control of the newspaper he always 
retained, and was also an editor of Harper's Maga- 
2ine, 1884-1898. He was all his life an eager but 
critical reader, a frequent traveler, a keen student of 
men and manners. 

Mr. Warner put an extremely modest estimate upon 
his own creative work, and his permanent place in 
our literature may not be large. His personal influ- 
ence on all who knew him was truly inspiring. He 
was the most conscientious of workers. When 
already an old man, with many divergent interests, 
he assumed the editorship of the ambitious " Library 
of the World's Best Literature," in thirty octavo vol- 
umes. During the rapid completion of this task he 
discussed carefully the assignment of every name. 
As the original essays arrived, he gave to each at least 
one uninterrupted critical reading. Every error or 
fault of style was noted, and revision insisted upon. 
To his staff of devoted assistants no large editorial 
responsibility was ever abandoned. 

Mr. Warner was by no means a man of the boldest 
creative imagination. He was not a poet at all. The 
form of the novel he deliberately adopted, quite late 
in his career, expressly to criticise most effectively 
certain dangerous phases of metropolitan life. Ther^ 
is something of the clever amateur in his rather trans- 
parent plots, as in Dr. Holmes's ; but his shrewd 
observation, and his genial philosophy of life, make 
his three stories valuable, chiefly as realistic studies 
by a keen yet kindly critic. 



LATER NEW ENGLAND 325 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

E. E. Hale's fifty books have many publishers. " Man with- 
out a Country," Little, Caldwell, Estes. Colonel Higginson's 
works, Houghton. Frank Bolles's works, Houghton. "Un- 
leavened Bread," by Robert Grant, Scribner. Aldrich's works, 
Houghton. " Come Forth," by Mr. and Mrs. Ward, Houghton. 
Curtis's works, Harper. " Passe Rose," by A. S. Hardy, Hough- 
ton. Warner's essays by Houghton, novels by Harper. See in 
general, Vedder's " American Writers.'* 



CHAPTER IV 



THE WEST 



THE West is after all but the swift-grown child 
of the East. There is no sharp line between, 
such as slavery drew about the South. There were 
but two notable pauses or eddies of the steady 
occidental stream : in the Ohio Valley, and at the 
Pacific coast itself. From either the back current 
is still strong, as we have remarked : and especially 
so for the literary artist, as we shall note repeatedly. 
Early waifs in this Eastward tide were, for 
instance, Alice Gary and her less fluent, more ardent, 
gifted sister, Phoebe. Both came from Ohio to 
New York in 1852. Their city home became the 
center of a social and literary circle as pure and 
earnest as their verse. Much of the elder sister's 
work, in particular, was crude fiction and hasty 
hack work, already forgotten. Their utterance, more 
successfully at least than their outward career, threw 
its gentle force against the drift cityward. Children 
of the middle West they were still to the last. The 
critics usually deny them greatness ; but many men 
and women who dare praise aloud only "the bards 
sublime," know by heart, and murmur in lonely hours, 
" An Order for a Picture," and especially " Nearer 
Home." One brief personal utterance of Sappho, 
aglow with a flame far less pure, has come to us 
across the billowy centuries that have closed over 



THE WEST 327 

almost all the epics and tragedies, the stately galleons 
of antiquity. 

A much later acquisition of New York from Ohio 
is Miss Thomas, whose lyric verse, laden with the Edith 
rich vocabulary of Elizabethan English, full of ex- ^^*j^^* 
quisite gleams from outdoor life, and of deep spiritual 1854- 
insight through suffering, is perhaps the most elab- 
orately artistic utterance we now have. "The In- 
verted Torch," in particular, contains passages not 
wholly unworthy of " Lycidas," " In Memoriam," or 
any great threnody of our language. 

The purely literary career that is most com- 
pletely typical of our last four decades is doubtless 
Mr. Howells's. Born in an Ohio village, bred with wniiam 
scant formal education, but among abundant Eng- Ho\veUs 
lish books and intelligent kin, he was typesetter, 1837- 
reporter, editor at twenty-two, published a book of 
verse in 1860, wrote a campaign life of Lincoln, and 
received the consulship at Venice as his reward. 

His four years in Italy were well employed. His 
" Modern Italian Poets " is full of excellent criticism 
and translation ; but it is amusing to see how frankly 
the young Ohioan alludes to a large element in these 
poets which he does not understand. It is, in fact, 
that unbroken relation to the whole historic past, 
above all to classical antiquity, which is closest in 
Italy, and is so remote from the consciousness of 
our own Western type of man. 

Howells's early leap to the chief editorship of the 
Atlantic^ in 1872, was a notable and successful invasion 
of local exclusiveness. But ten years later lie 
retired, soon came to New York, and has since writ- 
ten a very long shelf of novels. Howells's enthusi- 



328 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

asm, idealism, romanticism, never prominent, long 
ago quite vanished. In fact his literary creed has 
now hardly room for anything but the faithful tran- 
scription of life, which seems also to mean for him 
essentially the daily doings and sayings of average 
men. Perhaps it is unfair to add the popular judg- 
ment that he usually creates women shallow and inane 
below the average of any American community: but 
at least we must dissent heartily from his conviction, 
that our women lack the sense of humor. Further- 
more, even prosaic truth is uttered more and more in 
the unmistakable tone, if not form, of the preacher. 
He has almost come at last, like Tolstoi, to a semi- 
hostile contempt for all merely beautiful art, or for 
any effort not austerely altruistic and philanthropic. 
Mr. Howells has, perhaps, deliberately undertaken, 
like Balzac, to include in a cycle of realistic scenes 
all the salient types of the social world as he has 
seen it. His books may therefore be much more 
valuable and interesting to a future historian than 
to us, who think we know, all too well, our every- 
day selves. 

The crop of Hoosier poets has been larger than in 
the eastward neighbor-state, and the local quality 
in their work has been more pervasive and essen- 
JohnHay, tial. John Hay, indeed, who leaped into public 
notice with the rather irreverent poetry of " Little 
Breeches" and "Jim Bludso," is almost lost from 
sight, for the new generation, in the courtly diplo- 
matist and statesman, the secretary and biographer 
of Lincoln, who came from the London embassy to 
take the highest position in Mr. McKinley's cabinet. 



183S- 



THE WEST 329 

But J. J. Piatt, though many years in Washington John James 
and twelve years consul at Cork, has never ceased to ^^*^*' ^^^^ 
be a poet of the middle West. His first book of 
rhymes was a joint venture with Howells in 1860. 
Many verses by his gifted wife, who is of Kentucky Sarah 
birth, have also appeared in his volumes year by ^0^^^° 
year. After sharing with his brother Will the Piatt, 1836- 
falling fortunes of the South, Maurice Thompson (James) 
returned to the state of his birth. Much later, in JJ^^'^^^® 

' Thompson, 

1890, he came to the local staff of the JSFew York Inde- 18M-1901. 
pendent. Indeed, Thompson was the most versatile 
and happy of men, at home in the East, West, and 
South, an authority on classicism or literary criti- 
cism generally, geology, archery, fishing, woodcraft, 
on life out of doors or in. Poetry, romance, and 
scholarship are no less happily united in such tales 
as "Alice of Old Vincennes." 

"Lew" Wallace, a gallant Union general, is most Lewis 
widely known for his "Ben Hur," an extremely J^^T-^^* 
popular romance, as audacious in its subject, and as 
reverent in its intention, as Mrs. Ward's "Come 
Forth." If a creation of art is to produce a strongs 
simple effect, it cannot safely piece out the most 
familiar and sacred incidents with modern and pro- 
fane invented detail. Indeed, no such work can fail 
to shock or to bewilder many religious minds. Yet 
others feel that they draw from it clearer compre- 
hension and more devout belief. 

Altogether native to Hoosier soil are the subjects, 
the favorite dialect, and the method generally, of 
Mr. Riley. He is a real poet, appealing with power James 
to our deepest elemental feelings. We trust the ^fj^^^i^^ 
main stream of his verse will run more and more 



330 THE J^ATIONAL EPOCH 

from the wells of English undefiled. '^ Ike Walton's 
Prayer " is at least equal to a similar masterpiece of 
Herrick, "Low is my Porch." 
Edward Dr. Eggleston was born in Indiana, of Virginian 

isIt-^^^^* stock. His Hoosier schoolboy and schoolmaster, as 
well as the circuit rider, are drawn essentially from 
his own life. But the young pioneer had become, 
before he was forty, an editor at Evanston, Illinois, 
then at Chicago, later still reached the headship of 
the New York Independent^ and was a liberal preacher 
in Brooklyn. Having left the pulpit over twenty 
years ago. Dr. Eggleston spends at least half his 
year in fruitful retirement at Owl's Nest, his cottage 
by Lake George. A successful writer of boys' books, 
of novels for grown-ups, and of religious works. 
Dr. Eggleston has long devoted his best energies to 
American history. His " Beginnings of a Nation " 
is a first installment, upon a large scale, and wrought 
with unstinted devotion. His collection of books, 
old pictures, manuscripts, and relics of every kind 
for his great task is said to be unrivaled. There 
are, indeed, few lives that seem more wisely planned, 
more happily rounding to harvest time. May his 
days be long, and continuously useful. 

It is probable that Chicago will hereafter be, in 
letters as in so much else, the chief bulwark against 
the centralizing force of New York, perhaps some 
day her real rival. The beginnings are relatively 
small, indeed. Meantime, in the columns of a younger 
Dial a wide circle of respected critics, secured from 
certain very human temptations by their appended 
^signatures, assess contemporary literature with a 



THE WEST 331 

frankness, fairness, and courtesy not elsewhere com- 
bined. 

It is a curious accident that Eugene Field, the Eugene 
most brilliant author yet associated with Chicago, 13^1395 
was, in the course of his erratic early life, actually a 
schoolboy in Amherst, Massachusetts, and a student 
at Williams College. Eccentric, prodigal, uneven 
in quality to the last degree, the work of Field, in 
prose and verse, bears the unmistakable stamp of his 
unique and powerful genius. Especially, whether 
in dialect, mock archaic, or straightforward English, 
Field utters the very heart's secrets of boyhood as 
not even Riley or Louis Stevenson can do. " Wynken, 
Blynken, and Nod " became long ago a kindergarten 
classic. His echoes of Horace are not mere irrev- 
erent travesties, but seize the very essence of the 
thought, and render it in the most startlingly up- 
to-date English, spiced both with current slang and 
with Field's own invented idioms. He was really a 
learned man in many lines rarely, if ever, united 
before. He was not a cynic, though he never lost 
the opportunity for mockery, banter, and jest. Mr. 
Field had the mobile face, the rich, sympathetic voice, 
of a great actor, and as a reader of his own verse 
was unapproachable. His early death is as irrepa- 
rable to lovers of our literature as to those who knew 
and loved him best in the flesh. Such men as Field, 
Clemens, Riley, are already quite independent of the 
Puritan tradition. 

The most promising and versatile romancer of Henry- 
Chicago is Mr. Fuller. His " Chevalier of Pensieri ^^^1^^ 1857- 
Vani" excited the enthusiasm of Mr. Lowell and 
Prof essor Norton, and showed mastery of a style as 



332 



THE NATIONAL EPOCH 



"William 
Vaughan 
Moody, 
1869- 



delicate, playful, and consciously artistic as Steven- 
son's "Prince Otto." After one other such inter- 
national venture Mr. Fuller came back in " The 
Cliff-dwellers " to the tall blocks of his Western 
metropolis, and to comparative realism. 

One of the junior instructors in Chicago Univer- 
sity, William Moody, though among the youngest of 
our poets, seems, more than any other who is now 
active, likely to enforce that direct and fearless ap- 
peal to the popular conscience with which Whittier 
and Lowell once made us familiar. Such verses as 
those " On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines" set the 
author in frankest opposition to the overwhelming 
popular feeling of the hour ; but we have not ceased 
to share Hosea Biglow's liking for the man "thet 
ain't afeard ! " Mr. Moody is, however, a true 
dreamer of the dream, and will not give up to 
preaching the powers w^hich should be consecrated 
above all to creative and beautiful art. 



William 
Carleton, 

1845- 



"Will" Carleton, born in Michigan, is the 
chronicler of the rude frontier social life, preacher 
of the simplest and most obvious moralities, in verse 
slightly touched with dialect and still more rarely 
with poetic art. Many years spent in greater New 
York have left him unchanged. His " Farm Ballads," 
"Farm Legends," "Rhymes of our Planet," etc., 
have passed already for the most part to the samfe 
forgetfulness as Holland's more melodious verses 
and E. P. Roe's novels. Yet few men or women 
past forty can read " Betsy and I are Out," and the 
self-evident sequel, aloud, with unbroken voice. 
Carleton's verse has touched a million simple hearts. 



THE WEST 333 

and injured none. Poe's weirdest harmonies — but 
why draw contrasts ? 

The short stories of " Octave Thanet " depict, Alice 
better than any others, perhaps, the gradual fusing ^^^^' 
of alien elements in our new race, the growth in the 
second generation of a self-respecting Americanism. 
She knows best the towns and villages of Iowa and 
the neighboring states. The fierce and all but pes- 
simistic realism of Hamlin Garland has its truthful Hamlin 
side, and even its artistic power, also ; but we must ^i*°*^' 
trust that the future will justify rather the more 
hopeful pictures of Miss French. 

Mrs. Catherwood, a skillful writer of romances, Mary 
has shared in the revival of the historical novel, lay- i^fj*^®^^^, 

*^ Catherwood 

ing her scenes on ground made familiar by Parkman. 1847- 
Her Indian battles are almost as graphic and swift- 
moving as Cooper's. Mrs. Foote, both as novelist and Mary 
artist, shows her familiarity with the grand moun- ^oJe^^^giy 
tain scenery of the Southwest, and with the social or 
economic problems that face the pioneer settlers. 

Over thirty years ago Bret Harte's " Luck of (Francis) 
Roaring Camp," and other sketches of California isl^c^i^o!^' 
miners, gamblers, stage robbers, of the motley, law- 
less life generally in the gulches and gold fields, 
were welcomed with general delight, very like the 
later reception of Kipling's first stories. While his 
years have more than doubled, Mr. Harte, through 
one decade spent in the Eastern states and more 
than one in England, has worked the same vein. 
Readers he must still find, in other lands at least ; 
but his very name is now hardly familiar to our boys' 
ears. His verse, serious or comic, is still less remem- 



884 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

bered to-day, and yet " Ah Sin ^* is probably the last 
example of a poem that set our whole people laugh- 
ing. It perceptibly affected public opinion on a 
burning question, that of the Chinese Exclusion Bill. 
There is no dangerous immorality in Mr. Harte's 
stories. But they pall upon us at last, because, after 
the novelty wears off, their melodramatic unreality 
forces itself even upon the most boyish mind. 
Cincinnatus It was in London that another poet of California, 
MUier 1841- " Joaquin " Miller, became famous by the publication 
of his "Songs of the Sierras." "The American 
Byron " his English adorers called him, and the par- 
allel has more excuse than many such. He is yet 
living in California, has wandered to the Klondike, 
and is still writing books of verse. He is, despite 
grievous errors as man and author, a real poet, per- 
haps the boldest, freest voice of the far West. In a 
severely winnowed yet copious selection he will live 
as one of our most original singers. Spiritual mes- 
sage he has none. 
Edward Though Sill spent his last years in the University 

snr^° of California, his exquisite lyric gift was in no 
1841-1887. perceptible degree there acquired. His contrasted 
poetic descriptions of the Medicean and the Melian 
Venus might have been written by some sculptor- 
poet like Story, with a sturdy Puritanic morality 
underlying his worship of beauty. His " Fool's 
Prayer " and " Opportunity " are classical in their 
exact versification, a bit mediaeval in color, but, 
after all, universal, human, masterful. We would 
gladly know more of this quiet hidden life that 
has left such pure and sincere lyric expression 
of itself. 



THE WEST 335 

It was by the Golden Gate, too, that rest came to Helen 
the fiery heart of Helen Hunt. Born, like that shy ^"^^^^ 
secluded, yet ardent child of nature and of genius, (Fisk) 
Emily Dickinson, in the little college town of Am- issil^^gs's 
herst, Massachusetts, near the home of the sweet- Emily 
voiced Goodale sisters, she naturally came under is^Tsse!' 
Emerson's influence. His mystical double mean- Elaine 
ings, overburdened phrase, and audacious breaks in Eastman, 
sequence, may all be paralleled in her verse. But '^^^ 
it was utter domestic bereavement that first made Goodale, 
her a poet, and brought through her comfort to ^^^ 
many hearts that ache. Her glimpses of nature 
remind us of Thoreau's verse and poetic prose. 

Inflamed by sympathetic study of the Mission In- 
dians on the west coast, she retold the tale of their 
wrongs in her "Ramona." This romance has often "Ramona,' 
been likened to Mrs. Stowe's master stroke. In his- ^^^^' 
toric importance there is no comparison, but in its 
glowing, scorching force, and the wild imaginative 
beauty of descriptive passages, the later book is per- 
haps superior. The pitiful but essential difference is, 
that the Indian vanishes before us, we apparently 
escape the penalty due for the sins of our pioneers, 
and " Ramona " itself is but an elegy, like " Evange- 
line " and " Hiawatha," over a broken people. Not 
so the sturdier black brother ; with him, as Whittier 
reminded us so early, 

" Close as sin and suffering joined, 
We march to Fate abreast." 

Mrs. Jackson imitated Mrs. Stowe also in publishing 
the documentary proofs of her case, under the caustic 
title, "A Century of Dishonor." 



336 



THE NATIONAL EPOCH 



Kate 
Douglas 
(Smith) 
(Wiggin) 
Riggs, 1857- 



Jack 

London, 

187&- 



Much else this brilliant woman wrought, always 
with the touch of the artist, — and with the impa- 
tience of them that follow the gleam. In verses like 
*' Spinning " she teaches herself in vain the lesson 
of resignation. The truer note for her is always 
the restlessness uttered in the " Wandersongs." 

Through California, too, passed in early youth 
Kate Douglas Wiggin, leaving a flash of sunlit color, 
mocking laughter, smiles, tears, and murmur of bene- 
dictions behind her. However, this favorite bird of 
passage not only had her first home nest in staid 
Pennsylvania, but soon flitted eastward again. It is 
not necessary to follow Jack London to the Klon- 
dike, to the blinding snow fields and ice floes of the 
Arctic, in further quest of local color. The Philip- 
pines are not yet a literary annex. Rather we may 
yield to the refluent current, and return toward the 
heart of the East. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Howells's novels by Houghton and Harper. Eggleston's 
"Beginners of a Nation," Appleton. Eugene Field's works, 
Scribner. Fuller's " Chevalier of Pensieri Vani," Century ; " Cliff- 
dwellers," Harper. Poems of William V. Moody, Houghton. 
" Octave Thanet " (Miss French), Houghton, Harper, Scribner, 
McClurg. Bret Harte's works, Houghton. Sill's poems and 
prose, Houghton. Helen Hunt, poems, " Ramona," Little. 



CHAPTER V 
THE MIDDLE EAST 

THE impetus given by Franklin to the quiet town 
of Penn spent itself rather early in the race 
with other cities. Political power passed south- 
ward to the newly created capital. Commerce, 
population, and finally letters have streamed to 
Manhattan. 

The venerable figure of Dr. Mitchell, the friend siiasWeir 
of Dr. Holmes, himself also the wise and learned ^2^^^' 
physician, philosopher, romancer, poet, is one of 
the most satisfying in our present horizon. His 
local attachment is stanch, too, and " Hugh Wynne, 
Free Quaker," perhaps the best of all our histori- 
cal romances, successfully revives the half-forgotten 
glories of Philadelphia as the center of the patriotic 
struggle for independence. But there is certainly 
little trace of a local school. Miss Repplier's Agnes 
thorough bookish culture is half French, half f^^^'®""' 
British, while the feathered wit of her swift- 
ranging criticism is perhaps wholly Gallic. Horace 
Howard Furness, the Shakespearean scholar. Profes- 
sor John Bach McMaster, the historian of America, 
and even the unwearied veteran, Henry C. Lea, be- 
long rather to scholarship than to belles lettres. 

Though Mrs. D eland has been twenty years a Wade 
Bostonian, the restful coloring of "Tommy Dove" ^^^^^^^^^ 
and " Old Chester " tempts us to count her with the 1857- 
z 337 



S3S THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

Quakers of Penn's lands still. Into the larger effort 
entitled " John Ward, Preacher," there entered the 
strain of intense theological struggle, very much as 
in Mrs. Humphry Ward's books. Any such motive 
is a danger to a work of art ; yet the high ethical pur- 
pose is to be eagerly welcomed back into our fiction, 
which has too largely become the mere spicy diversion 
of languid hours. George Eliot showed us that artistic 
form could mold even such grave material into works 
of permanent value. 

This artist's one migration was most natural ; but 
two or three sons of Pennsylvania have wandered 
widely indeed. Crevecoeur, to be sure, was neither 
native born, nor a willing exile. But Leland has 
neither excuse. The merry lilt of " Hans Breit- 
mann" was in true Pennsylvanian dialect, surely. It 
gave much pleasure to the last great English laureate, 
himself a poet in three or four dialects. But since 
then Hans has hobnobbed with Spanish brigands^ 
Italian witches, Greek archaeologists, and especially 
wdth Borrow's old comrades, the gypsies, until he has 
quite forgotten the sea path homeward. His republic 
of congenial spirits would have no Anglo-Saxon, 
dominance, like Kipling's, but a far more motley 
citizenship than even Crawford's wide artistic sym-^ 
pathy includes. As every homeward-floating report, 
that we catch declares, this is a life as happy as it is. 
long. Lost languages, even, are among the treasure- 
trove of this inspired excavator and explorer. The 
secret of human freemasonry is his chief discovery,. 
Hans is in luck still ! 

A year later only, Bayard Taylor was born to- 
honest poverty at Kennett Square, in Chester County y. 



THE MIDDLE EAST 339 

Pennsylvania. Largely self-educated by omnivorous (James) 
reading, Taylor at nineteen found in New York a Tay?o'r^ 
market vainly to be sought there now. Horace Gree- 1825-1878. 
ley engaged beforehand a series of traveler's letters. 
The two years' journeyings described in "Views "Views 
Afoot " cost, thanks to abstemious habits and priva- f^^^^*'* 
tions gladly faced, only five hundred dollars, all 
earned by the letters to the Tribune and by an occa- 
sional poem in the forgotten magazines of i^ve-Atlantic 
days. Taylor's popularity as a lecturer in following 
years was like that of John L. Stoddard and his 
stereopticon in our time. His copyrights bought him 
a share in the Tribune, for which journal he became the 
first great world-circling reporter, sent to the millen- 
nial celebration of Iceland, to the gold fields of '49, 
even to the heart of Africa. 

Yet he never really lost the home feeling. His 
beautiful Cedarhurst overlooks many goodly acres 
that had once been owned, two centuries earlier, by 
his first American ancestor. "The Story of Ken- "Story of 
nett " and other romances are loyal to his own soil. ^g^^"'" 

Later his German wife aided Mr. Taylor to a full 
entrance into the literature of the Vaterland. His 
" Faust," in the meters and rhymes of the original, " Faust,'» 
is doubtless the most perfect piece of uncreative work 
a poet ever set himself to do. 

The craving for the poet's crown made Bayard 
Taylor unsatisfied with all else. Bits of his lyric are 
living yet, and especially his " Poems of the Orient " 
breathe full East. His " Centennial Ode " of 1876 was " Masque of 
worthy of the distinction. But his most ambitious ^^^2. ° ^' 
attempts — "Lars," " Deukalion," "Masque of the "Lars," 
Gods " — were quite too remote even for his partial ^^'^^' 



i40 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

" Prince readers. This failure to reach a really national posi- 
Deakahon,' ^^^^ wounded liis noble x^ride. Perhaps he had been 
absent too long. Perhaps his time would have come, 
later yet. Perhaps he gave fully what he was fitted 
to give. He died suddenly, and, as it seemed, un- 
timely, very soon after reaching Berlin as American 
minister. Longfellow wrote for him a dirge begin- 
ning : — 

" Dead he lay among his books, 
The peace of God in all his looks." 

A singularly detached piece of Taylor's work is the 
"' Echo *' Echo Club," the cleverest series of harmless parodies 

Club," 1878. 4. J • A • 

yet made m America. 
Thomas The fuller allegiance of Mr. Read to the painter's 

Read^°^^ art explains his long Italian exile, like Story's. The 
-1822-1872. familiar experience of twofold homesickness is indi- 
cated in his " Drifting," while his " Sheridan's Ride " 
is one of the best war lyrics, and his hero gallops 
almost as resonantly as the trio in Browning's " Ghent 
to Aix." 

Authors are usually busy, struggling folk. Their 
actual work is best done in solitude. They never 
need congregate, as lawj^ers must, nor become public 
characters, like preachers. Not all of them find in 
their own fellow-craftsmen their best stimulus or 
comradeship. They dislike to be netted in "schools," 
like fish. Even in a smaller town, three prominent 
writers, like Mrs. Stowe, Mr. Warner, and Mark 
Twain in Hartford, need not influence each other. 
In the world-city on and about Manhattan people 
almost as famous as that trio may live for decades, 
and naver grow aware one of another. They are 



THE MIDDLE EAST 341 

simply men and women, absorbed in observing, study- 
ing, and recording. 

Nevertheless, the early friendship of Boker, the George 

rich Philadelphia banker's son and graduate of Prince- ^^^H 

ton, Bayard Taylor, coming from his country school, 1823-1890. 

and Stoddard from his iron foundry, a friendship Henry'^ 

later shared by Stedman and Aldrich, is as real Stoddard, 

1825- 

a link in our story as Simms's Charleston coterie, or 
that elder Mutual Admiration Society at the Boston 
Saturday Club, where Holmes talked, while Emerson 
and Hawthorne, Agassiz and Lowell, listened. Just 
such a group could only meet in New York, where 
Puritanic Bryant, and even the jovial Southron, Gil- 
more Simms, could be equally at home. 

Boker's dramas were written early, and in the 
eager hope of a real theatrical career. The subjects 
did not hit the rather crudely patriotic taste at home, 
but were drawn from Spain as in Longfellow's case, 
from Italy, and England. In the latter land, too, 
but not at home, his Spanish drama, "Calaynos," was "Caiaynos,' 
promptly staged, and had a moderate success. It was Jf^^jje 
many years after, too late to revive Mr. Boker's early Boieyn," 
enthusiasm, when Lawrence Barrett made " Francesca 
da Rimini" well known to American audiences. Per- "Collected 
haps our lack of a vigorous dramatic literature is not fgse^'" 
mainly chargeable to our poets. Certainly, even 
-vhen merely read carefully, Boker's " Francesca " 
seems a remarkably strong play. The versification, 
and the character drawing, though both lack the 
dreamy mysterious charm of Stephen Phillips's recent 
"Francesca," are strong, masculine, and clear. In- 
deed, Boker's plays are probably the best yet pro- 
duced among us. 



342 



THE NATIONAL EPOCH 



Elizabeth 

Drew 

(Barstow) 

Stoddard, 

1823- 



In general, Boker has hardly come to his due as 
an author. Some of his war lyrics have always been 
favorites, notably the "Charge of the Black Regi- 
ment," and "Dirge for a Soldier." After his dip- 
lomatic career ended, he spent his last years in the 
refined and exclusive social life of his birthplace. 

Richard H. Stoddard, though the son of a Yankee 
sea captain, seems to belong wholly to the metrop- 
olis, where he has lived from his tenth year. He 
is one of our sturdiest men of letters, yet without 
a trace of the savagery that amused him in Whit- 
man. Indeed, his standing as a refined and artistic 
poet is unquestioned, though his own preference for 
his Oriental vein is not shared by his warmest ad- 
mirers. Perhaps, rather, Abraham Lincoln is his 
fittest subject, despite the deadly rivalry of Lowell's 
" Commemoration Ode." Mr. Stoddard and his friends 
feel that the lifelong fight against the wolf on the 
doorstone, the chained servitude to hack work of 
every kind, has prevented the larger artistic growth 
he could have attained. But even his frank, kindly 
reviews of current works, for thirty years, in daily 
newspapers, have been a real if often thankless service 
to his craft. More permanent are his careful studies 
of the older English poets. Best of all is his brave, 
free, generous life. Mrs. Stoddard is his comrade in 
all tasks, has herself an independent and vigorous 
though not a large share in American lyric, and has 
written three original and powerful novels. 

It is to such folk, the last who would seek or per- 
haps even accept it as a favor, that care-free leisure 
for purely artistic work should come as a right, a pro- 
fessional distinction fairly won in noble eompetition. 



THE MIDDLE EAST 843 

We are beginning to endow plodding research. The 
dreamer of dreams is more needed, and as a rule more 
needy. Stephen Phillips, in his youthful vigor, is a 
pensioner of the crown. Shall our poets find no 
Carnegie ? 

The life of our chief literary historian and sym- Edmund 
pathetic critic has resembled that of his senior and ^J^^®^*^® 

^ ^ Stedman, 

friend, Stoddard, though both his distractions and 1833- 

his literary activities appear to have moved through 

larger curves to more ambitious results. A career in 

Wall Street would seem a far more dangerous and 

irrevocable desertion of the Muses than any drudgery 

of Newspaper Row. Yet when the poet, the other 

day, formally retired from business life, even one 

of his brother financiers was inspired to utter the 

love of them all, in witty and tender verse. 

Certainly Stedman's popularity among the brethren 
of the swan-quill is fairly earned. No man, surely, 
has received with patient courtesy so many eager 
aspirants. His correspondence is itself a fine art, in 
its tact and scrupulous care. His quartette of com- 
prehensive works, the Victorian and American An- 
thologies, the critical estimates of recent English 
poetry and of all our American verse, would alone 
be the monument of a busy life. 

The young architect of airy rhyme, seeking esoteric 
suggestion and guidance, will naturally find more in 
Stedman's interpretative prose than the lay reader 
can hope to do. As a critic he is extremely gentle. 
A somewhat severer winnowing of the best in 
each man's work from the commonplace, a franker 
tone, when need be, of reproof or even condemna- 
tion, many of us miss. Thus he grants Whitman 



344 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

the distinction of a full chapter in the " Poets of 
America," intimates, of course, his own wide diver- 
gence from the noisome swamp of " Priapism," yet 
by no means gives to " Whitmania " the coup de grace 
which Colonel Higginson, no less tactful and courte- 
ous, has delivered, with more deadly force than is his 
wont, in a brief section of his " Contemporaries." 

Stedman's verse is by some considered to give 
him the first place among our living poets. Perhaps 
so. Though not " an empty day," our own is at best 
but a lyrical intermezzo, beginning when Lowell 
grew silent, if not longer ago. Mr. Stedman paid 
his prompt tribute of fearless admiration to Ossawa- 
tomie Brown in 1859, and later wrote war lyrics, 
like "Kearney at Seven Pines." Perhaps his 
" Cavalry Song " is best known, though lovers and 
country boys have thanked him for " The Doorstep," 
until he begs beforehand that his " least considered 
trifle " shall be praised no more. 

This chain of friendship still adds newer links. 
Stedman collaborated with Stoddard long ago, and 
George in 1895 produced with Professor Woodberry the 

Woodberry "monumental edition of Poe's works. To Longfellow, 
1855- the lover of the beautiful, who sought and found 

little else save beauty, succeeded fitly in the Smith 
chair, and in the larger seat of public criticism, Mr. 
Lowell, with his franker dislikes, his severer assess- 
ment of evil as of good. So Mr. Woodberry, who 
has seemed most likely to rival the scope of Sted- 
man's critical work, is far less the " Friend of all the 
World," whether in personal comradeship or literary 
toleration. As a poet Mr. Woodberry clings to the 
North Shore of the Bay State. Indeed, he may 



THE MIDDLE EAST 345 

resent any enrollment in Manhattan at all. As pro- 
fessor of comparative literature, and as judged from 
some recent utterances, Mr. Woodberry seems likely 
to welcome that Hellenic revival which is perhaps the 
crying need of our literary and general artistic life, 
and which the rise of athletics may seem to bring 
already one step nearer. 

One Columbia colleague, Brander Matthews, is james 
possibly more widely known than Woodberry, by his ^^^°f^^ 
criticism of drama, of words and dialect, of manners 1852- 
and life, by his own work as playwright, and of late 
by realistic sketches of the many-tinted cosmopolitan 
life in the great seaport. Other New Yorkers there 
are that demand a page, at least, where a line is 
hardly to be spared. Among the dead we must name 
Winthrop, first of our young athletes, who galloped Theodore 
across the prairies in real life as in his romance of 1828^186?' 
" John Brent," and was a costly early loss in the 
Civil War : H. C. Bunner, easily the first American Henry 
in the school of Austin Dobson, best-beloved of g^^^^gj. 
jesters and parodists : Richard Hovey, the elegiac 1855-1896. 
mourner for T. W. Parsons, himself just dead in jjovey 
his early prime, whose Arthurian verse rang fear- 1864-1900. 
less challenge on the laureate's loft}^ shield; and, 
most picturesque and pathetic among all the city's 
memories, the great-hearted, childlike editor, Horace Horace 
Greeley. If his own volume of recollections hardly ^7i-i872 
opens the gate of letters to Farmer Greeley, he must 
still be mentioned, like James T. Fields in the East, 
as the generous if gruff helper of every struggling 
scribbler, from the days of the Cary sisters, Margaret 
Fuller, or Bayard Taylor, to the end. Among the 
living, typical rather than preeminent figures, are 



346 



THE NATIONAL EPOCH 



Richard 
Watson 
Gilder, 1844- 
Hamilton 
Wright 
Mabie, 1845- 



Henry 
Jackson 
Van Dyke, 
1852- 



Francis 
Richard 
Stockton, 
1834-1902. 



Samuel 
Langhorne 
Clemens, 
1835- 



K. W. Gilder, poet, scientific student of poverty and 
charity, the successful editor of the Century Magazine^ 
and H. W. Mabie, genial dispenser with voice and 
pen of good advice as to our reading and culture. 
We must trust that he himself finds leisure to peruse 
Dante and Homer afresh each year in their own 
speech. His third favorite, Shakespeare, he certainly 
knows aright. Dr. Van Dyke, though of Dutch 
ancestry and Scotch creed, is a valued champion of 
the fullest freedom in thought and utterance, of the 
happiest outdoor life. Some of the largest figures in 
the intellectual life of the metropolis, like Curtis and 
Ho wells, we have already essayed to sketch. 

Not far away in New Jerse}^ is, or was, the home of 
Frank Stockton, the most elaborately and solemnly 
absurd of all our humorists. Everything his charac- 
ters perpetrate is copiously justified, even urged 
plausibly upon us as obviously the only thing to do ; 
and while we are vaguely aware that in our own world 
these people would all be labeled idiots, under his kind- 
lier sky they invariably come to fortune, fame, and 
happy wedlock. His sea tales strike a more novel vein 
than Cooper's. In one child's story, '' Old Pipes and 
the Hamadryad," he tosses us, with a gentle grin, an 
exquisite, genuine mock-Hellenic myth. So it is 
possible our mirth is bought, in the case of Stockton, 
at the price of a poet's birthright. But there is one 
American humorist who towers far above Stockton, 
toward the height of Rabelais. 

The judgment of other peoples, so eagerly ac- 
cepted in all literary questions by our grandfathers, 
undoubtedly regards " Mark Twain " as the chief 
figure among our living authors. It is not easy to 



THE MIDDLE EAST 347 

suggest a rival. He is not a poet : but except Mr. 
Kipling, who is much else, the writers of verse exert 
little force in the world to-day. Despite some effort 
of his to escape the name, he is classed as a humorist; 
but the countrymen of Poor Richard, of Died- 
rich Knickerbocker, of Hosea Biglow, not to men- 
tion professional buffoons like " Artemus Ward " 
and *' Josh Billings," can hardly repudiate such a 
representative. He is not typical, we may say, he is 
unique ; but when did originality prove a handicap 
for fame ? His works may defy classification under 
the accepted rubrics ; so did '' Don Quixote," " Hu- 
dibras," "Sartor Resartus." He is unsentimental, 
iconoclastic, irreverent ; but so is his age. Mr. 
Kipling in his notes on America has a vivid account 
of his interview with Twain ; and we suspect he has 
also more or less consciously sketched him, in a 
memorable poem, as the typical American. *' Un- 
kempt " if not " disreputable " Mark might appear ; 
and "imperturbable" he certainly is. 

Bret Harte, in letters, is still a Californian only, 
and twenty years' exile in London would surely leave 
Whitcomb Riley, like Piatt, a Hoosier no less. Each 
belongs to his section. Few know, and no one cares, 
where "Mark Twain," the American, was born. For 
the resources of his strength he is as little indebted to 
any one state or region as is the Father of Waters 
himself, who gave the boy Missourian his rude ap- 
prenticeship as pilot, and his world-famous pen name : 
for it is simply the Mississippi boatman's call, when 
the sounding line indicates just two fathoms. 

Doubtless the intrusive Yankee at King Arthur's 
Court horrified Lord Tennyson and his people. As 



348 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

incongruous he surely is, though by no manner of 
means so ignoble, as Falstaff's followers in the heroic 
King Harry's valiant host, or Thersites in the circle 
of Homeric chiefs. But to set forth that incongruity 
Mr. Clemens had to see, and depict with absolute 
vividness, both the oldest and the newest forms of 
modern life. His boys' story, " The Prince and the 
Pauper," is as finished a labor of love in its details as 
"Henry Esmond." His "Joan of Arc" maintains 
its place against unnumbered rivals. Upon the 
familiar home ground, the tale grotesquely called 
" Pudd'nhead Wilson " has a grim tragic power. The 
homely Western life out of which such giants as 
Lincoln and Edison are springing has never been so 
vividly set before us as in some of Twain's autobio- 
graphical writings. 

Steadfast pluck and unpretentious honesty, or 
something still more like heroism, he has shown in 
recent years, quite as much as Sir Walter Scott, 
whose assumption of his publisher's debts has always 
glorified him in our eyes. Even in his most recent 
public utterances, however he may have been misin- 
formed as to his statistics, Mark's general position, 
that Christian missionaries should have no share or 
part whatever in the looting of China, is surely the 
only defensible or civilized ground to occupy. 

One negative trait of Twain must puzzle his Pari- 
sian readers, as it would have bewildered no less the 
Athenian lovers of Aristophanic comedy. Whether 
serious or irresistibly funny, he is never an immoral, 
degrading, or foul writer. Here indeed he maintains 
a truly American character. Franklin's pages were 
purer than his life. Irving never repeated the frolic- 



THE MIDDLE EAST 349 

some coarseness that makes us occasionally skip a sen- 
tence in the Knickerbocker narrative. If Whitman's 
verse were as artistic as it is shapeless, as intelligible 
to the common man as it is unmeaning, yet the 
violation of good manners, the reckless, exultant 
nakedness, would still shut his book out of our sit- 
ting rooms : his admiring British public have read 
only an expurgated edition. Neither Eugene Field's 
deadly banter, nor Mr. Dooley's brogue, nor George 
Ade's flood of slang, could ever carry down with im- 
punity a broad hint of filth or obscenity. French 
critics insist that their light fiction and favorite 
journals give a wholly false impression of the real 
tone of morality in social life. In our land we blush 
neither for the reality nor for the picture. There 
are unclean Americans, in and out of literature. 
There are even periodicals for the sporting and fast 
sets. But such scum floats far indeed from the clear, 
if shallow, stream of current literature in which our 
real national life is mirrored. 

We discuss Mark Twain here more at length, 
because the general acclaim of foreign readers, at 
least, and even of critics, declares him the typical 
American author of our day. However difficult to 
traverse, this statement is certainly unsatisfying to 
our national pride. It is perhaps explained by a 
wider truth, that our best vitality does not as yet 
devote itself to creative literature, nor to any of the 
fine arts. Our men of action write, as they speak, 
with vigor, clearness, ease, even occasional grace. 
The popular leaders, for instance, of the two races, 
Theodore Roosevelt and Booker Washington, are 
both authors of creditable books ; but certainly very 



350 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

few of us would think, or speak, first of that feature 
in tlieir many-sided, active careers. 

Our favorite writers of the passing day rarely pre- 
tend to offer more than light diversion for an idle 
hour. No American author has approached such an 
eminence as Dante or Goethe holds, as the largest 
mind amid a whole people. If Franklin did have a 
word to which the whole world paused to listen, 
it was certainly not a spiritual message uttered in 
the forms of art. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

S. Weir Mitchell's Poems, " Hugh Wynne," Century. Mrs. 
Deland's works, Houghton. Taylor's poems, Houghton ; " Ken- 
Tiett," Putnam. Boker's plays and poems, 2 vols., Lippincott. 
Stoddard's poems, Scribner. Stedman's poems, Houghton. 
Hovey's poems. Small, Lothrop. Stockton's stories. Century, 
Scribner, Harper, Houghton. Twain's works. Harper, Ameri- 
can Publishing Co., etc. 

The interesting story of Bayard Taylor's life has been re- 
corded by his widow, with the skillful aid of Horace E. Scudder ; 
Longfellow, Stoddard, Cranch, Aldrich, gave him poetical 
tributes, and his portrait is twice sketched by his fellow-Quaker, 
Whittier, in " Tent on the Beach," and " Last Walk in 
Autumn." 



CHAPTER VI 

CONCLUSION 

In the last careful revision, Oscar Fay Adams's 
" Handbook of American Authors " contains over six 
thousand names, but still makes no claim of com- 
pleteness. The present volume could mention only 
a few score. Such a selection is always more or less 
unfair. In two respects it is especially difficult. 

There are many books of scholars, scientific or 
professional men, which are important, sometimes 
extremely well written, yet lie only in the border 
land, the disputed marches, of literature. The essays 
of Professor Patton and others in Economics, the 
work of Professor Giddings and his peers in the still 
newer science of Sociology, the physical and ethno- 
logical volumes of Whitney and Shaler, both entitled 
" The United States of America," accounts of adven- 
turous travelers, like Stanley and Kennan, Kane and 
Peary, constructive work in theology or civics, like 
Elisha Mulford's "Republic of God," or "The Nation," 
exemplify the problem. Many a devout churchman 
would give Horace Bushnell a large place in our 
annals. Woodrow Wilson's sketch in a dozen pages, 
" A Calendar of Great Americans," should be pon- 
dered by every youth : yet he himself would exclude 
it from "mere literature." Even the sympathetic 
interpretation of other literatures is not precisely 
original contribution to our own. In this pleasant 

361 



352 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

borderland Miss Harriet Waters Preston is the largest 
figure among the living. Her versions of Virgil's 
Georgics, and from new and old Provengal, are alike 
masterly. History and oratory have been included 
here, but the inconsistency is confessed. Published 
lives of authors are oftener mentioned in our bibli- 
ography than in the text. A certain universality of 
interest, a certain charm in form as well as in sub- 
stance, admits a book into the demesne of belles 
lettres ; but who shall bar or open the gate ? 

A more invidious task is the winnowing of lyric 
poetry. Doubtless every community, if not every 
family, should have its improvisator, like each dale 
of Upper Tuscany. Sometimes, even in our unmusi- 
cal folk, this ideal seems near attainment. But 
either lyric verse has accomplished its public task, or, 
what is more likely, other Burnses, Kiplings, Whit- 
tiers, must arise, to reveal the poetry in the toil, the 
feelings, the inner and outer experiences of man, 
which as yet seem — after Whitman no less than 
before — unromantic, prosaic, vulgar. Meanwhile, 
hundreds of eagerly launched but unbought volumes 
illustrate the failure of verse to retain its hold on our 
generation. Were it not for the recent reverbera- 
tions of " Lest we forget," we might doubt whether 
a new '^ Ichabod " or " John P. Robinson," even a " Bat- 
tle Hymn," or any mere winged word, could nowadays 
reach a nation's ears. The tyranny of " end rhyme," 
in a language like ours, has undoubtedly lessened the 
wealth and vitality of lyric utterance. Here the effort 
has been to mention the few volumes of verse that are 
known to have aroused some echoes beyond the circle 
of personal affection. Some of the author's own 



CONCLUSION 353 

favorites are excluded, in the fear of partiality. Our 
margins are wide, expressly that the student may 
make his wiser choice. 

Epic is perhaps an antiquated form of art, as ora- 
tory seems just now, as sculpture seemed to many of 
us just before St. Gaudens, McMonnies, and French 
suddenly arose. But drama, surely, is indispensable. 
Yet we are hardly represented in it at all. Boker 
was quite isolated, and early disheartened. What 
effect the text alone of the late James A. Heme's 
moving melodramas might have upon a reader we 
can hardly guess. His popular rivals also keep the 
text of their dramas scrupulously out of print ; but 
there is no great poet, nor any exquisite minor poet, 
like Stephen Phillips, among them. Longfellow 
was always a lyrical singer, however extended the 
forms of his poetry became. So too was Taylor, the 
most ambitious in form among our less famous artists 
of verse. The stage waits for the master. From 
Shakespeare, or even from ^schylus, to Phillips, he 
has usually had to serve at least part of his apprentice- 
ship behind the footlights ; but genius may break all 
rules. 

The less ambitious forms of sustained verse, idyls 
like " Evangeline " or " Snow-Bound," narrative 
poetry like Longfellow's "Miles Standish," or even 
like Emerson's " Adirondacks," are strangely obso- 
lescent. Perhaps they, at least, can be revived. 

The short prose story suits our breathless reading 
public, and the making of it has been perfected until 
it now almost seems to be an art, a craft that can be 
imparted to clever pupils, or even self-taught by any 
deft handworker who is not destitute of material in 

2a 



354 THE NATIONAL EPOCH 

the form of stirring experience or happy imagination. 
Whether the popular favorite, Richard Harding- 
Davis, for instance, is still a clever reporter, or al- 
ready a creator of literature, is a debatable problem. 
At the same time, some of our truest artists and most 
earnest thinkers are also adopting the same form. 
A clever story wins a market and a hearing tenfold 
more easily and v^^idely than the best essay or poem. 
This may be in part a passing fashion, just as, from 
Dryden's time to Goldsmith's, sentiment, narrative,, 
even satire or political lampooning, was usually cast 
in rhymed couplets. 

The larger novel, as a dramatic interpretation of life, 
has hardly approached again the triumphs of Na- 
thaniel Hawthorne. Our romance is just now either 
busy preserving the most truthful local color, or else 
is breaking over the border line of history, and at- 
tempting to retell the most brilliant chapters of 
national experience. As we close these pages young 
Mr. Churchill's " Crisis " challenges the popular 
preference for the veteran Dr. Mitchell's "Hugh 
Wynne." 

In our material progress we seem to have come in 
sight, at least, of our destiny. But as for literature, 
we prefer to believe that we still but grope in the 
morning twilight. Longfellow's last verse was full 
of the gentle optimism he had preached so long : — 

" Out of the shadows of night 
The world rolls into light ; 
It is daybreak everywhere." 

And the wise Autocrat's word has a still clearer and 
no less hopeful meaning for us in particular : — 



CONCLUSION 355 

« Be patient ! On the breathless page 
Still pants our hurried past ; 
Pilgrim and soldier, saint and sage, — 
The poet comes the last ! " 

But the historian of literature, as of any fine art, 
must at least insist that the highest truth, and con- 
summate beauty, are one and the same ideal: that 
the life of the nation, as of the individual, can fitly 
culminate only in the creation of enduring master- 
pieces, which shall bring inspiration and uplifting to 
all after time. For such results alone are we grateful 
to earlier men. By them, and by naught else, can 
we adequately account for the measureless material 
advantages poured into our fortunate hands. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS AND WORKS 



Abraham Lincoln (Lowell), 235. 

Adam Bede, 165. 

Adams, Henry, 262. 

Adams, John, 55, 59, 74, 76, 266. 

Adams, Samuel, 56, 74. 

Ade, George, 349. 

iEschylus, 353. 

African Chief, 93. 

After the Burial, 231. 

Agassiz, 237. 

Ages, 92. 

Agnes of Sorrento, 195. 

Alcott, A. B., 139, 144, 148, 149. 

Aleott, Louise M., 149. 

Aldrich, T. B., 317. 

Alhambra, 82. 

Allen, James Lane, 311. 

Allston, Washington, 80, 2OT. 

Alone, 103. 

Alsop, Richard, 66. 

Ame7'ica, 217. 

American Annals, 106, 258. 

American Notebooks, 147, 154, 155, 159, 

Ainerican Scholar, 130. 

Army Life in a Black Regiment, 286, 

Arthur, T. S., 282. 

Astor, William W., 297. 

Audubon, J. J., 108. 

Aunt Phillis's Cabin, 196, 301. 

Autobiography (Franklin), 83. 

Autocrat of the Breakfast- Table, 218, 



6 

Backwoodsman, 97, 108. 

Baldwin, J. G., 302. 

Balzac, 328. 

Bancroft, George, 83, 259-260. 

Bancroft, H. H., 261. 

Barlow, Joel, 64-65, 67, 76, 106. 



Bartram, John, 60, 72. 

Bates, Katharine L., 319. 

Battle Hymn of the Republic, 94. 

Bay Psalm Book, 30, 35, 38. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 274. 

Beecher, Lyman, 189. 

Being a Boy, 358. 

Bells, 102. 

Ben-Hur, 329. 

Beverley, Robert, 11, 60, 68. 

"Biglow, Hosea," 21,28. 

Biglow Papers, 173, 227, 232, 233, 293, 332. 

Billings, Josh, 242, 347. 

Birds of America, 108. 

Black Cat, 105. 

Blithedale Romance, 166, 167-169. 

Blue and the Gray, 303. 

Boker, Geoi;ge H., 83, 341, 342. 

Bold Hathorne, 63. 

Bolingbroke, 50. 

Bolles, Frank, 318. 

Bowditch, Nathaniel, 76. 

Boyesen, Hjalmar H., 295. 
162. Bracebridge Hall, 82. 

Bradford, William, 14-16, 17, 36. 
315. Bradstreet, Anne, 31-32, 35, 40, 42. 

Brooks, Charles T., 321. 

Brooks, Maria G^wen, 241. 

Brooks, Phillips, 274. 

Brown, Alice, 320. 

Brown, Charles Brockden, 65-^, 67, 76, 
219. 106. 

Brownell, H. H., 321. 

Brownmg, Robert, 298. 

Brownson, Orestes, 145. 

Bryant, William Cullen, 90, 91-96, 106, 
108, 113. 

Bunker Hill Speech, 108. 

Bunner, H. C, 345. 

Bunyan, John, 21. 

Burial of the Minnisink, 199. 
357 



358 



INDEX 



Burnett, Frances E. H., 297-298. 

Burns, Robert, 104. 

Burroughs, John, 141, 251, 318, 356. 

Byrd, William, 12. 

Byron, 104. 



Cable, George W., 312. 

Calhoun, John C, 267. 

Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, 225, 239. 

Cape Cod, 284. 

Captains Courageous, 299. 

Carleton, William, 332. 

Cary, Alice, 326. 

Cary, Phoebe, 326. 

Castle-builders, 5. 

Castles in Spain, 255. 

Cathedral, 236, 237. 

Catherwood, Mary H,, 333. 

Catullus, 104. 

Cecil Dreeme, 284. 

Chambered Nautilus, 219. 

Changed, 198. 

Channing, William Ellery, 114-115, 

Channmg, William E., 2d, 139, 149, 150, 318. 

Chanumg, William H., 143. 

Cheerful Yesterdays, 315. 

Child, F. J., 316. 

Child, Lydia Maria, 186-189. 

Children's Hoicr, 204. 

Choate, Rufus, 271. 

Christmas Banquet, 158. 

Christus, 211, 212. 

Church, Thomas, 68. 

Churchill, Winston, 354. 

Clara Howard, 106. 

Clarke, J. F., 115, 145. 

Clay, Henry, 267-268. 

Clemens, Samuel. See Twain, Mark. 

Cliff-dwellers, 364. 

Cloud on the Way, 96. 

Coleridge, Samuel T., 46, 104. 

Come Forth, 321. 

Commemoration Ode, 236, 342. 

Compensation, 138. 

Conduct of Life, 138. 

Conquest of Granada, 82. 

Contentment, 218. 

Conversations on Some of the Old Poets 

228. 
Cooke, P. P., 302. 



Cooper, James Fenimore, 78, 85-91, 96, 108. 

Cotton, John, 40. 

Courtin', 233. 

Courtship of Miles Standish, 209, 210, 214. 

Craddock, C. E., 312. 

Cranch, C. P., 244. 

Crawford, F. Marion, 298, 299. 

Crevecoeur, Hector Saint-John de, 51. 

59-60, 61, 74. 
Crisis, 354. 
Croaker Poems, 108. 
Cross of Snow, 204. 
Culprit Fay, 97, 98. 
Curtis, G. W., 95, 321. 



Daffydowndilly, 162. 

Daisy Miller, 358. 

Dana, R. H., 108, 242. 

Dana, R. H., 2d, 242. 

Dante, 164. 

Davis, Richard Harding, 354. 

Days, 136. 

Deacon's Masterpiece, 215, 219, 222. 

Death of the Flowers, 96. 

Declaration of Independence, 57. 

Deerslayer, 87. 

Defense of Poetry, 291. 

Deland, Margaret W. C, 337. 

Democracy, 238. 

De Musset, 104. 

De Stael, 116. 

Devil in Manuscript, 154. 

Dial, 132, 146. 

Dial (of Chicago), 330-331. 

Dickinson, Emily, 335. 

Divine Tragedy, 212. 

Dixie, 302. 

Dolph Heyliger, 82, 85. 

Douglass, Frederick, 282, 295. 

Drake, J. R., 96. 

Drake, Samuel Adams, 302. 

Dred, 194. 

Dutchman's Fireside, 97. 

Dwight, John S., 243, 244. 

Dwight, Timothy, 65, 67, 76. 



E 



Each and All, 128, 136. 
Eastman, Charles, 295. 



INDEX 



359 



Eastman, Elaine G., 335. 

Eastman, Mary A., 301. 

Easij Chair, 322. 

Echo Club, 340. 

Edgar Huntley, 106. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 48-50, 60, 70, 72, 114, 

115. 
Eggleston, Edward, 330. 
Eliot, Charles W., 320. 
Eliot, George, 338. 
Eliot, John, 40, 42. 
Elizabeth, 210. 
Elsie Venner, 219, 220, 224. 
Emerson, Mary M., 122, 123. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, iv, 22, 49, 115, 

120, 122-138, 144, 145, 149, 151, 245, 251. 
Emerson the Lecturer, 131, 226. 
Endicott and the Red Cross, 23, 
English Traits, 125, 133. 
Envoi to the Muse, 138, 223. 
Eternal Goodness, 185. 
Ethan Brand, 162. 
Evangeline, 207-208. 
Evans, Marion J., 312. 
Evening Star, 204. 
Everett, Edward, 116, 117, 271, 272-273. 



Fable for Critics, 105, 126, 176, 189, 22^ 

224, 230, 237, 240, 242. 
Fall of the House of Usher, 103, 105. 
Fanshawe, 108. 
Federalist, 57. 

Ferdinand and Isabella, 254. 
Field, Eugene, 331. 
Fields, Annie A., 317. 
Fields, J. T., 317. 
Finch, Francis M., 303. 
First Snowfall, 231. 
Fiske, John, 262, 263. 
Flood of Years, 92, 93. 
Flowers, 202. 

Floioersfor Children, 187. 
Floyd Ireson's Bide, 181, 185. 
Fool's Errand, 358. 
Foote, Mary H., 333. 
Footsteps of Angels, 202. 
Forerunners, 138, 223. 
Foster, Stephen C, 302. 
Fountain (Bryant) , 96. 



Francesca da Rimini, 341. 

Franklin, Benjamin, iv, 50-55, 68, 70, 72 

74, 76, 80, 81, 291, 297, 350. 
French, Alice, 333. 
Freneau, Philip, 62-63, 67, 74, 76. 
From my Armchair, 214. 
Fuller, H. B., 331. 
Fuller, Margaret. See Ossoli. 



Garland, Hamlin, 333. 

Garrison of Cape Ann, 180. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 118, 174, 175. 

Gayarre', C. E. A., 261. 

Gentle Boy, 23, 158, 160. 

Gilded Age, 356. 

Gilder, R.W., 346. 

Gildersleeve, Basil L., 305. 

Godwin, 66. 

Gold Bug, 105. 

Golden Legend, 211, 212, 213. 

Golden Milestone, 205. 

Goodale, Dora R., 335. 

Good Word for Winter, 235. 

Grant, Robert, 319. 

Gray Champion, 23, 160. 

Great Carbuncle, 160. 

Great Stone Face, 160. 

Greeley, Horace, 345. 

Guardian Angel, 219. 

Guiney, Louise I., 295. 



Hale, Edward Everett, 244, 314. 

Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 97. 

Hamilton, Alexander, 58. 

Hanging of the Crane, 213. 

Hardy, A. S., 83, 322. 

Harris, Joel Chandler, 310-311. 

Harte, F. Bret, 83, 333, 334. 

Hawthorne, Julian, 297, 318. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, iii, iv, 17, 18, 23, 

79, 83, 89, 127, 147, 148, 151-172, 354. 
Hay, John, 328. 
Hayne, Paul H., 306. 
Hedge, F. H., 115, 144, 145. 
Heine, 104. 
Heyne, 116. 
Henry, Patrick, 56. 



360 



INDEX 



Herodotus, 252, 253. 

Hiawatha, 201, 208-209. 

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, iv, 79, 

141, 148, 150, 244, 262, 314-315, 3i4. 
History of Spanish Literature, 117. 
History of the American Navy (Cooper), 

88. 
History of the Roman Republic, 147. 
Hobomok, 108. 
Holland, J. G., 245. 
Holmes, Ablel, 106, 258. 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 21, 32, 51, 96, 

121, 136, 137, 140, 215-224, 355. 
Home as Found, 88. 
Homer, 3, 209. 
Hoosier Schoolmaster, 356. 
House of the Seven Gables, 152, 166, 

167. 
Hovey, Richard, 345. 
Howe, Julia Ward, 316. 
Howells, William Dean, 83, 327-328. 
Hugh Wynne, 3.37. 
Hunt, Helen, 335. 
Hutchinson, Thomas, 57, 72, 257. 
Hyperion, 203. 

I 

Ichabod, 133, 179, 190, 270. 

Idle Man, 108. 

Hiad (Bryant) , 94. 

Innocents Abroad, 286. 

Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood, 

96. 
Inverted Torch, 327. 
Irving, Washington, iv, 78-85, 96. 



Jackson, Helen Hunt Fiske, 335. 
James, Henry, 298. 
Jane Talbot, 106. 
Jay, John, 58. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 57, 58, 59. 
Jewett, Sarah Orne, 319. 
John Ward, Preacher, 338. 
Johnston, Mary, 13, 313. 
Johnston, Richard M., 310. 
Judas Maccabseus, 210. 
Judd, Silvester, 242. 
Juvenile Miscellany, 186. 



K 

Eathrina, 246. 
Kavanagh, 203. 
Kennedy, John P., 100, 250. 
Key, Francis (Scott) , 106, 303. 
Kipling, Rudyard, 3, 52, 181, 203, 299, 347. 
Knickerbocker History of New York, 80, 
106. 

L 

Lady or the Tiger ? 360. 

Landor, Walter S., 231. 

Lanier, Sidney, 307-309. 

Last Leaf, 217, 222. 

Last of the Mohicans, 87. 

Last Walk in Autumn, 181, 183. 

Lea, H. C.,257. 

Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, 

18. 
Legends of the Province House, 24. 
Leland, Charles Godfrey, 338. 
Liberator, 174, 185. 
Life of Washington (Irving), 83. 
Life of Washington (Marshall), 106. 
Life of Washington (Paulding), 97. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 58, 273, 275. 
Little Lord Fauntleroy, 360. 
Little Women, 286. 
Living Temple, 219. 
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 261. 
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, iv, 17, 35, 

120, 121, 197-214, 354. 
Longstreet, A. B., 302. 
Looking toward Sunset, 187. 
Lounsbury, T. R., 323. 
Lowell, James Russell (see also Biglow, 

Hosea), iv, 83, 96, 131, 143, 224-240, 292. 
Lucy Larcom, 183. 

M 

Mabie, Hamilton W., 346. 

Macaulay, T. B., 82. 

Madison, James, 58. 

Main Street, 24, 160. 

Maine Woods, 284. 

Manners, 138. 

Man xoithout a Country, 284, 314. 

Marble Faun, 179. 

Marco Bozzaris, 97. 

Margaret, 242. 

Margaret Smith's Journal, 18, 24. 



INDEX 



361 



Mather, Cotton, 44, 46-48, 60. 

Mather, Increase, 44, 47, 68. 

Matthews, J. Brander, 345. 

Mayday, 140. 

Maypole of Merry Mount, 23. 

Melville, Herman, 246. 

Mezzo Cammin, 205, 207. 

Michael Angelo, 210, 214. 

Miller, Cincinnatus H., 334. 

Milton, John, 27, 46, 80, 114. 

Minister's Wooing, 195. 

Mitchell, Donald G., 323. 

Mitchell, S. Weir, 337. 

Mockingbird, To the, 309. 

Moody, William V., 332. 

Moosehead Journal^ 239. 

Moral Pieces, 106. 

Morituri Salutamus, 199, 214. 

Morton, Thomas, 17, 38. 

Mosses from an Old Manse, 127, 157, 158. 

Motley, J. L., 83, 256-257. 

Murders in the Hue Morgue, 105. 

Murfree, Mary N., 312. 

Murray, Lindley, 76. 

Musa, 223. 

My Garden Acquaintance, 226, 239. 

My Kinsman Major Molineux, 160. 

My Lost Youth, 198. 

My Psalm, 185. 

N 
Nature (Emerson), 128. 
Naulahka, 364. 
Nearer Home, 326. 
New Adam and Eve, 158. 
New England Girlhood, 362. 
New England Tragedies, 211. 
Nina Gordon, 194. 
Norton, Charles Eliot, iv, 35, 316. 



Odyssey (Bryant), 94. 
O'Hara, Theodore, 302. 
Old Burying Ground, 185. 
Old Ironsides, 216, 217, 222. 
Old Swimmin'-hole, 360. 
Oldtown Folks, 195. 
Order for a Picture, 326. 
O'Reilly, John Boyle, 319. 
Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, 144, 169. 



Otis, James, 55, 72. 
Our Old Home, 169. 



Page, Thomas Nelson, 311. 

Paine, Thomas, 50, 56, 74, 76. 

Palfrey, John G., 260. 

Pandora, 210, 214. 

Papers on Literature and Art, 147. 

Parker, Theodore, 118, 145, 274. 

Parkman, Francis, 90, 263-264. 

Parsons, T. W., 245. 

Passe Rose, 322. 

Pathfinder, 87. 

Pauldmg, J. K., 97, 106, 108. 

Payne, John H., 297. 

Pearl of Orr's Island, 195. 

Penn, William, 144. 

Phillips, Stephen, 341, 343, 353. 

Phillips, Wendell, 118, 270. 

Philothea, 187. 

Piatt, J. J., 329. 

Piatt, Sarah M. B., 329. 

Pike, Albert, 309. 

Pilot, 88. 

Pmdar, 104. 

Pmkney, E. C, 302. 

Pioneers, 86. 

Poc, Edgar Allan, iii, 9&-105, 108, 224. 

Poet at the Breakfast-Table, 21%, 225. 

Poor Chiffonier, 248. 

Pope, 50. 

Prairie (Cooper), 87. 

Prairies (Bryant), 96. 

Precaution, 86. 

Prescott, W. H., 121, 25^-255.. 

Prescott, Life of, 117. 

Present Crisis, 94, 231. 

Preston, Harriet W., 352. 

Preston, Margaret J., 312. 

Prince and Pauper, 360. 

Professor at the Breakfast-Tadle, 218; 

Prometheus, 231. 

Prudence Palfrey, 356. 

Psalm of Life, 202. 



R 



Rain-Dream, 96. 
Ramona, 335. 
Randolph, John, 267. 



362 



INDEX 



Raven, 101. 

Read, T. B., 340. 

Rebels, 108, 186, 188. 

Red Rover, 88. 

Repplier, Agnes, 337. 

Representative Men, 132. 

Rhodes, J. F., 261. 

Rhacus, 231. 

Rhymed Lesson, 216. 

Richards, Laura E. H., 320. 

Riggs, Kate D. S. W., 336. 

Riley, J. W., 329-330. 

Ripley, Ezra, 127. 

Ripley, George, 145, 150. 

Robert of Lincoln, 96. 

Roberts, C. G. D., 297. 

Roderick Hudson, 358. 

Roe, E. P., 246. 

Romola, 164. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 261, 349. 

Roughing It, 356. 

Rousseau, 50. 

Ryan, "Father," 303. 

S 
Saga of King Olaf, 213. 
Salamagundi Papers, 80, 106. 
Sanborn, F. B., 318. 
Sandys, George, 9, 38. 
Sappho, 326. 
Saxe, John G., 242. 
Scarlet Letter, 18, 152, 155, 156, 163, 164- 

166, 167, 171. 
Scudder, Horace E., 315. 
Scudder, Vida D., iii, 19, 319. 
Sedgwick, Catharine M., 241. 
Seven Tales of My Native Land, 154. 
Seven Vagabonds, 154, 159. 
Sewall, Samuel, 33-34, 35, 42, 44. 
Shakespeare, 11. 
Shaler, N. S., 318, 351. 
Shaw, Henry W., 242. 
Shore Acres, 364. 

Sigourney, Mrs. Lydia H., 106, 241. 
Silas Lapham, 360. 
Sill, Edward R., 334. 
Simms, William G., 303-305. 
Skeleton in Armor, 201, 203. 
Sketch-Book, 81-82. 
Sleeper, 102. 
Smith, F. H., 312-313. 



Smith, John, 8, 9, 10, 36, 38. 

Smith, Samuel F., 217. 

Snow-Bound, 18, 176, 177. 

Snow Image, 153, 159. 

Song of the Kansas Emigrants, 179. 

Sophocles, 104. 

Spanish Student, 210, 255. 

Sparks, Jared, 258. 

Spofford, Harriet P., 320. 

Spy, 86. 

Stanton, Frank L., 309. 

Star-Spangled Banner, 106, 303. 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 343-344. 

Stillman, William J., 297. 

Stockton, Frank R., 346. 

Stoddard, Elizabeth D. B., 342. 

Stoddard, Richard H., 95, ft6, 342. 

Story, William W., 247-249. 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 189-196. 

Strachey, William, 10, 11, 13, 36. 

Strenuous Life, 368. 

Stuart, Ruth McE., 312. 

Sumner, Charles, 118, 270-271. 

Suthin' in the Pastoral Line, 233. 

Swinburne, 104. 



Tabb, John B., 308-309. 

Tales of a Traveler, 82. 

Tales of a Wayside Inn, 213. 

Tamerlane, 108. 

Tanglewood Tales, 167. 

Tayior, J. Bayard, 83, 96, 338-340, 353. 

Tennyson, 104. 

Terminus, 134, 136. 

Thanatopsis, 92, 93, 108. 

Thanet, Octave, 333. 

Thaxter, Celia, 320. 

Thomas, Edith M., 327. 

Thompson, J. Maurice, 329. 

Thompson, Will H., 303. 

Thoreau, Henry David, 121, 138-143. 

Threnody, 131, 231. 

Thwaites, R. G., 261. 

Ticknor, George, 116-121. 

Timrod, Henry, 305-306. 

Timrod, William H., 305. 

Titcomb, Timothy, 245. 

To a Child, 204. 

To Have and To Hold, 368. 



INDEX 



363 



To Helen, 103. 
Tom Sawyer, 358. 
Town Pump, 160. 
Tragic Muse, 362. 
Trowbridge, J. T., 315. 
True Relation of Virginia, 8. 
Trumbull, John, 63-64, 67, 76. 
Twain, Mark, 78, 346-350. 
Twice-told Tales, 158. 
Two Angels, 205. 

U 
Uhland, 194. 
Ulalume, 102. 

Uncle Tom's Cabin, 173, 190-194, 196. 
Unleavened Bread, 319. 



Van Dyke, Henry, 346. 
Vanishers, 138, 223. 
Venetian Life, 284. 
Very, Jones, 243. 
Via Crucis, 368. 
Village Uncle, 159. 
Virtuoso's Collection, 158, 162. 
Vision of Sir Launfal, 97, 234. 
Voiceless, 222. 
Voices of the Night, 203, 
Voltaire, 50. 
Voluntaries, 134. 

W 

Wake-robin, 356. 

Walden, 139, 142. 

Wallace, Lewis, 329. 

Ward, Artemus, 347. 

Ward, Elizabeth S. P., 321. 

Ward, Nathaniel, 27-28, 35, 38, 40. 

Warner, Charles Dudley, 300, 323-324. 

Warner, Susan, 249. 

Warren, Joseph, 74. 

Washington, Booker T., 295, 349. 



Washington, George, 58, 72, 76. 

Waterwitch, 108. 

Wealth, 138. 

Webster, Daniel, 76, 108, 179, 190, 266, 267, 

268-270, 271. 
Webster, Noah, 108. 
Wedding Journey, 356. 
Week on the Concord and Merrimac, 142. 
Wendell, Barrett, 82, 148, 318. 
Whipple, E. P., 246-247. 
White Old Maid, 160. 
Whitman, Walter, 249-250, 251, 343, 349, 

352. 
Whitney, Adeline D. T., 316. 
Wliitney, William D., 323. 
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 18, 96, 175-185. 
Wiggin, Kate D. S., 336. 
Wigglesworth, Michael, 32, 35, 42. 
Wigwam and Cabin, 278. 
Wilde, R. H., .302. 
Wilkms, Mary E., 319. 
Williams, Roger, 28-30, 35, 40, 42. 
Wilson, Woodrow, 351. 
Winslow, Edward, 15, 36. 
Winsor, Justin, 261. 
Wmthrop, John, 25-26, 34, 38. 
Winthrop, Robert C, 26, 271, 272. 
Winthrop, Theodore, 26, 345. 
Woman in \^h Century, 146. 
Wo7ider-Book, 166, 167. 
Woodberry, George E.,344. 
Wood Notes, 134, 149. 
Woolman, John, 59, 61, 72. 
Wordsworth, 46. 
Wreck of the Hesperus, 203. 



Yayikee Gypsies, 176. 

Year's Life, A, 228. 

Yemassee, 304. 

Young Goodman Brown, 1^^, 160. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 



[Note. — This list includes especially histories of literature, biographies of authors, 
and in general secondary work rather than pure literature. As a rule no allusion 
is here made to the works of authors who themselves appear in the body of the 
book. In all such cases the student should refer directly to the brief bibliography 
which follows each chapter or section.] 



Adams, Henry, History of the United 

States (Scril9ner), 67. 
Adams, O. F., Dictionary of American 

Authors (Houghton), 6. 
Alcott, Louisa M., Transcendental Wild 

Oats, 150. 
Allen, A. V. G., Life of Jonathan Edwards 

(Houghton) , 60. 
Appleton, Cyclopsedia of American Biog- 
raphy (Appleton), 6. 
Arber, Complete Works of Captain John 

Smith, 13. 
Arnold, Matthew, Discourses in America 

(Macmillan), 137. 
Austin, Mary S., Life and Times of Philip 

Freneau (Wessels), 67. 

B 

Baskervill, William M., Southern Writers 
(Barbee), 313. 

Bigelow, John, Franklin's Autobiography 
(Knickerbocker Nuggets), 60; Life of 
Benjamin Franklin (Lippincott) , 61; 
W. C. Bryant (Houghton), 95. 

Bradford, W., History of Plymouth Plan- 
tation (Maynard), 14, 16. 

Brodhead, J. R., Neio York (Harper), 85. 

Burroughs, John, Indoor Studies (Hough- 
ton), 143; Whitman, A Study (Hough- 
ton), 251. 



Cabot, J. E., Memoir of Ralph Waldo 
Emerson (Houghton), 137. 



Cairns, W. B., On the Development of 

American Literature (Wisconsin Uni- 
versity), 98. 
Carpenter, George R., American Prose 

Selections (Macmillan), 67. 
Channing, William E., 2d, Thoreau the 

Poet-Naturalist (Roberts) , 143. 
Channing, William H., Life of William 

Ellery Channing (American Unitarian 

Society) , 120. 
Chapman, J. J., Emerson and Other 

Essays (Scribner), 137. 
Curtis, G. W., Literary and Social Essays 

(Harper) , 172 ; Orations and Addresses 

(Harper), 214,240. 
Curtis, G. T., Life of Daniel Webster 

(Appleton), 275. 



Dall, Caroline H., Margaret and her 

Friends (Little) , 147. 
Dean, J. W., Michael Wigglesworth's Day 

of Doom, 35. 
Drake, S. A., New England Legends and 

Folklore (Little), 185, 302. 



E 

Earle, Alice Morse, The Sabbath in Puri- 
tan New England (Scribner) , 23 ; Home 
Life in Colonial Days (Macmillan), 
23; Child Life in Colonial Days (Mac- 
millan), 23. 

Edwards, Jonathan, Complete Works 
(Bohn),60. 



365 



366 



INDEX 



Eggleston, Greorge C, American War 
Ballads and Lyrics, 67. 

Ellis, George E., Diary of Samuel Sewall, 
35. 

Ellis, J. H., Poems of Anne Bradstreet, 
35. 

Emerson, Edward W., Emerson in Con- 
cord (Houghton) , 137. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo (with Channing, 
W. H., and Clarke, J. F.), Memoirs of 
Margaret Fuller, 147. 



F 

Farnham, C. H., Life of Francis Park- 
man, 264. 

Fields, Annie, Authors and Friends 
(Houghton), 172; Life and Letters of 
H. B. Storm (Houghton), 195. 

Fields, J. T., Yesterdays with Authors 
(Houghton), 172. 

Fiske, J., Beginnings of New England 
(Houghton) , 23. 

Ford, P. L., Prefaces, Proverbs, and Poems 
of Franklin (Knickerbocker Nuggets), 
60 ; The Many-sided Franklin (Century), 
61. 

Frothingham, O. B., George Ripley 
(Houghton), 150. 



Godwin, Parke, Life of William Cullen 

Bryant (Appleton), 95. 
Greeley, Horace, Recollections of a Busy 

Life, 147. 
Grimm, Hermann, Literature (Cupples), 

137. 



Hakluyt, R., Principal Navigations, Voy- 
ages, Trajiiques, and Discoveries of the 
English Nation, 7-8. 

Hale, Edward Everett, Loioell and his 
Friends (Houghton) , 214, 240. 

Hart, A. B., Guide to the Study of Ameri- 
can History (Macmillan), 264. 

Hawthorne, Julian, Nathaniel Haiothome 
and his Wife (Houghton), 148, 172. 

Higginson, Thomas W., Margaret Fuller 
Ossoli (Houghton) , 147 ; Contemporaries 



(Houghton), 150, 251; Old Cambridge 

(Macmillan) , 214, 240. 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Ralph Waldo 

Emerson (Houghton), 137. 
Howe, Julia Ward, Margaret Fuller 

(Little, Brown) , 147. 
Ho wells, William D., Literary Friends 

and Acquaintances (Harper), 214, 224, 

240. 

I 

Irving, Pierre, Life and Letters of Wash- 
ington Irving (Putnam), 84. 



James, Henry, Hawthorne (Harper), 172. 
Jameson, J. F., History of Historical 

Writing in America (Houghton), 121, 

264. 

K 

Kennedy, W.S.,H.W. Longfellow (Loth- 
rop), 214. 

L 

Lathrop, G. P., A Study of Hawthorne 
(Houghton), 172. 

Lathrop, Rose H., Memories of Hawthorne 
(Houghton), 172. 

Lodge, H. C, Studies in History (Hough- 
ton), 35; Daniel Webster (Houghton), 
275. 

Longfellow, Samuel, Life of H. W. Long- 
fellow (Houghton), 214. 

Lossing, B. J., Trumbull's M'Fingal, 67. 

Lounsbury, T. R., James Fenimore Cooper 
(Houghton), 89, 91. 

M 

Marshall, John, Life of Washington, 106. 
Marvin, A. P., Life and Times of Cotton 

Mather, 60. 
Mitchell, D. G., American Lands and 

Letters (Scribner) , 6. 
Morse, John T., Life and Letters of 0. 

W. Holmes (Houghton), 224. 

N 
Norton, C. E., Letters of J. R. Lowell 
(Harper), 240. 



INDEX 



^67 



Onderdonk, J. L., History of American 
Verse (McClurg), 5. 



Page, H. A., Thoreau, his Life and Aims 

(Houghton) , 137. 
Page, T. N., The Old South (Scribner), 

313. 
Palfrey, J. G., History of New England 

(Little) , 23. 
Pauldiug, J. K., Life of Washiyigton, 97. 
Payne, E. J., Selections from Hakluyt's 

Voyages, 13. 
Pickard, S. T., Life and Letters of J. G. 

Whittier (Houghton) , 185. 
Pierce, E. L., Life of Charles Sumner 

(Little), 121. 
Pulsifer, D., Simple Cobbler of Agawam, 

35. 

R 
Richardson, C. F., History of American 

Literature (Putnam) , 5. 



Sanbom, F. B., Henry David Thoreau 
(Houghton), 143; (with Harris, Wm. 
T.) , Alcott's Life and Philosophy (Rob- 
erts), 150. 

Savage, James, Gov. Winthrop's Diary, 
34. 

Schurz, Carl, Henry Clay (Houghton), 
275; Charles Sumner (Lee), 275. 

Scudder, H. E., J. R. Lowell (Houghton), 
240. 

Scudder, V. D., Introduction to English 
Literature (Globe School Book Co.), 6. 

Shurtleff, N. B., The Bay Psalm-Book, 35. 

Stedman, E. C, Poets of America (Hough- 
ton), 5; (with Hutchinson, E. M.), Li- 
brary of American Literature (Webster 
and Co.), 5. 

Stephen, Leslie, Hours in a Library (Put- 
nam), 172. 

Stevenson, R. L., Familiar Studies of 
Men and Books (Dodd) , 143. 

Stillman, Wm. J., Autobiography (Hough- 
ton), 214, 240. 

Stowe, C. E.,Life of H B. Stowe (Hough- 
ton), 195. 



Swinburne, A. C, Studies in Prose and 
Poetry, 251. 



Taylor, Marie H. (and Scudder, H. E.), 
Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor 
(Houghton) , 350. 

Ticknor, George, Life of Wm. H. Prescott 
(Houghton) , 117, 164 ; History of Span- 
ish Literature (Houghton), 121. 

Trent, Wm. P., Southern Statesmen of 
the Old Regime (Crowell) , 275 ; William 
Gilmore Simms (Houghton) , 313 ; (with 
Wells, B. W.), Colonial Prose and 
Poetry (Crowell) , 5. 

Tyler, M. C., History of American Litera- 
ture during the Colonial Period (Put- 
nam) , 5, 14 ; Literai'y History of the 
American Revolution (Putnam), 5; 
Three Men of Letters (Putnam), 67. 

U 

Underwood, F. H., H. W. Longfellow 
(Houghton), 214; John G. Whittier 
(Houghton), 185. 

Upham, C. E., Salem Witchcraft in Out- 
line (Eckler), 214. 



Vedder, Henry C, American Writers of 
To-day (Silver) , 325, 336. 

Von Hoist, F., John C. Calhoun (Hough- 
ton), 275. 

W 

Warner, C. D., Washington Irving 

(Houghton) , 84. 
Wendell, B., Cotton Mather, the Puritan 

Priest (Dodd), 60; Literary History of 

America (Scribner), 5. 
Whitcomb, S. L., Chronological Outlines 

of American Literature (Macmillan) , 6. 
Wilson, J. G., Bryant and his Friends 

(Fords) , 91. 
Winthrop, R. C, Life and Letters of John 

Winthrop (Little) , 34. 
Wirt, Wm., Life of Patrick Henry 

(Coates) , 108. 
Woodberry, George E., Edgar Allan Poe 

(Houghton) , 105. 



TOPICS FOR ESSAYS OR LECTURES 

1. Our debt to older races and literatures. 

2. Epochs and divisions in our history and intellectual life. 

3. Life, character, and writings of Captain John Smith. 

4. Social conditions in the South, and their effect on literature, illustrated 

by the life and writings of Strachey, Beverley, Byrd. 

5. Pilgrim and Puritan : Bradford and Winthrop. 

6. Seventeenth-century authorship, from Roger Williams to Samuel 

Sewall. 

7. Relation of Sewall and Cotton Mather to the witchcraft delusion. 

8. The Mather " dynasty." 

9. Contrast between the early and the mature writings of Jonathan 

Edwards. 

10. Franklin's influence on the civic life of Philadelphia. 

11. General influence of Franklin on our national character. 

12. Services of Franklin to the cause of independence. 

13. Influence of oratory in the Revolution and at present. 

14. Virginian and New England statesmen in the Revolutionary epoch. 

15. Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. 

16. Hamilton and the Federalist 

17. Washington's state papers and speeches. 

18. Revolutionary poetry : Freneau, Barlow, and Trumbull. 

19. Merits and faults of Brockden Brown's style. 

20. Irving's Hudson River legends. 

21. Influence of England on Irving. 

22. Spanish influence in our literature. 

23. Cooper's Indians, and other sketches of Indian character. 

24. Scott's '^ Pirate " and Cooper's " Pilot." 

25. Nature as viewed by Wordsworth and by Bryant. 

26. Realism and fancy in Drake's " Culprit Fay." 

27. Form and content of Poe's verse. 

28. Moral purpose and sanity of Poe and Hawthorne. 

29. Emerson and Transcendentalism. 

369 



370 TOPICS 

30. The New England Lyceum. 

31. Brook Farm. 

32. Thoreau's hermitage, and his influence on later writers. 

33. Margaret Fuller's demands for women, and the extent to which they 

are now granted. 

34. Influence of Garrison on Whittier's life. 

35. Effect of abolition on the careers of Mrs. Child and Mrs. Stowe. 

36. Southern indignation over " Uncle Tom's Cabin." 

37. Antagonism of scholarship and poetic imagination. 

38. Longfellow's sources. 

39. Longfellow's and Tennyson's dramatic works. 

40. Classicism in our literature. 

41. Influence of Lowell's critical work on his poetry. 

42. The " medicated " novels of Dr. Holmes. 

43. The Yankee dialect. 

44. The short story in the hands of Hawthorne and his successors. 

45. Hawthorne's treatment of witchcraft. 

46. Influence of Italy and art on our poetry. 

47. The forms of Whitman's verse. 

48. Artistic form and substance in historical composition. 

49. Relation of Prescott's and Motley's topics to the general story of our 

own people. 

50. Personal relations of Ticknor, Prescott, Motley, etc. 

51. Attempts to supply a single adequate history of the American people. 

52. Parkman's life work. 

53. Present methods of historical composition. 

54. Ephemeral nature of oratory, 

55. Political oratory : Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. 

56. The elements of Webster's style. 

57. The agitators : Garrison, Phillips, Sumner, Beecher, Curtis. 

58. Everett and Lincoln at Gettysburg. 

59. The South in literature before and during the war. 

60. The new school of Southern writers. 

61. Alien (i.e. non-English) elements in our literature. 

62. Centralizing of literary workers on Manhattan. 

63. Growth of the magazines, and literary quality in newspapers. 

64. Cosmopolitan tendencies in our literature. 

65. Denationalized authors. 

66. Decay of poetry. Successors of Longfellow and Lowell. 



TOPICS 371 

67. The Hoosiers. 

68. The Far West in literature. 

69. Literary theory and practice of Mr. Howells. 

70. Famous stories of boyhood : Aldrich, Warner, Twain, etc. 

71. Literature and journalism, antagonistic or helpful? (E.g. to Curtis, 

Stoddard, R. H. Davis.) 

72. Novels based on American history. 

73. Religious novels (" Ben-Hur," " Come Forth," " Quo Vadis"). 

74. " Local color " in fiction. 

75. Dialect, fiction, and poetry. 

76. American humor, from Franklin to Twain. 

77. Frontier between scholarship and literature. 

78. Notable translations (Longfellow's " Dante," Taylor's " Faust," Bryant's 

" Homer," etc.). 

79. Relative rank of American literature. 

80. The future of literature. 



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